


Stockholm Syndrome

by orphan_account



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Reader-Insert, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-14 10:02:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 81,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10534185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In retrospect, maybe letting the new addition to the camp watch over the highly dangerous prisoner wasn’t exactly the smartest idea the Alexandrians had. After encountering Alexandrians on a scavenging run, you’re pulled into a new community with new rules, and all you want to do is be alone.Negan’s pretty sure he has Stockholm Syndrome, stuck with his new jailor and a prisoner of Alexandria, without his Saviors, or much of anything, really. Just you.[[[WOC!ReaderxNegan, kind of canon divergent but less canon divergent than 'Dunkelheit' - but you don't need to have read Dunkelheit to read this, you'll be reintroduced to the Reader-char all over again anyway]]]





	1. Welcome to the Family

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dunkelheit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9847778) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> [[WOC!Reader/Negan, actually the same one from my story, Dunkelheit, but being that this is an AU, you don’t have to have read it to read this. This is an AU of my AU which might follow canon a little bit more as the show heads to Kirk’s version of “All Out War” – who even knows?]] Gonna go ahead and say it – EVERY TRIGGER, bc Reader’s past hasn’t changed from the one in Dunkelheit.]]

 

You stood at the centre of a silent road, staring out into the vast American wasteland of what was probably once a lovely place to live. There were lovely suburban homes that stretched as far as the eye could see, each having a somewhat similar structure but with different windows, rooftops, and garage choices, and if you hadn’t known the world had ended, you would think you were standing on a television set. Everything about it seemed perfectly American to you, like someone would just open the door in their slippers at any second and get their mail out of their odd little outside boxes. Yeah, even that was different.

 

You scrutinised the worn-out map in your hands, the downside of escaping the state you were in meant that the second you crossed out of Louisiana, you had no real maps of use for Virginia and you were not used to feeling lost in such a big country. You wondered, briefly, if back home in England, you would have had an easier time of the end of the world. Snorting at the thought, you rolled the map back up and began checking homes. Four years into what your people back in Louisiana had called The Rising, it was getting harder and harder to find food that hadn’t rotted or gone sour.

 

The bayou people at least had their own means of food production, you were starving, and your body usually had a heavy intake of protein even if it was just military mush from the old base. The sun was uncomfortably hot, you’d run out of books to read, you were on your last bottle of water (which was disgustingly warm) and you were covered in sweat.

 

Looking down at yourself, you wiped the sweat off your naked collarbone and scowled, feeling yourself melting under the Virginia sun slightly.

 

It wasn’t quite like India, which you were used to, because you had weather durable clothes, beautiful ones at that – saaris and salwar kameez, no, instead you had thick selvage denim and even thicker sporting boots which made you fry from the waist down. The denim was so heavy with blood that they weren’t baggy anymore, and instead clung to the muscles which remained taut from walking miles upon miles down the massive too-large roads. You stripped out of your blood and guts-covered shirt once you’d gotten out of a small hoard, feeling the smell start to actually get worse under the heat and just giving up, letting the sun bleach and discolour your pale bra instead.

 

“Fuck’s sake, empty,” you scowled, kicking the door back open as you left the first house.

 

Hell, it’s not like you’d seen a living face in weeks and even if you did, you didn’t particularly care. Tying half of your hair up in a messy clumsy attempt at a turban, large dark bangs escaped either side of your head and fell-down to your chest, but it was at least now much harder for walkers to grab you. It didn’t do much for the heat though, but at least the sun wasn’t frying your scalp with it, you mused. So, you were hot, you were on your last bit of water which now tasted as appetising as sweat, you were pretty sure you might be on your last tampon, and you were really fucking hungry.

 

At the sound of familiar shuffling and raspy, decayed vocal chords, you turned around, detaching the kirpan from your hip – a long, ornate holy dagger, before looking at the size of the walker approaching you. You were short sure, but even if you weren’t, this guy was huge – and ugly, well, uglier than most – towering over you immensely.

 

“Waheguru give me strength, you are one ugly bastard,” you muttered, mingling Punjabi into your exclamation of surprise at the walker’s size alone. At least he was on his own, you’d gone through at least twelve today and you had your fill.

 

You slid the knife back and detached the large sledgehammer from your back, charging for its head first, gripping the long handle with both bruised fists, you swung it with enough force that had you been any weaker, you’d have been lost in its momentum. Cringing, you stepped back, realising that the sun was making the walkers worse than usual, they seemed more hungry, if that were possible, and the putrification process was getting more disgusting and making them smell even more bad than they already did. They had gone so soft in their state of decay that you didn’t even need to do much in the way of cutting them with your curved knife anymore, if you swung the sledgehammer with enough force their heads would just detach from their vertebrae and go flying.

 

And go flying they did, completely destroyed of course, like a grape, and landing on a car.

 

That’s how you’d met Rick Grimes.

 

You’d launched a walker head directly onto the jeep he’d been driving to scavenge, making him almost swerve and come to a screeching halt, with several spidery cracks going through his windshield. You froze when you saw a moving car, because in your experience, meeting other survivors wasn’t a good thing. Not considering the place you’d fucking fled from, you’d met maybe one nice person and tried to help them take a pharmacy, they ended up getting killed, so you weren’t really in a good place to be making friends or potentially meeting new enemies.

 

You glanced down the road and contemplated just running and then hiding in one of the houses, only to hear the jeep door open as you thought about it. Swallowing thickly, you clenched your hands around the long handle of the sledge which was, in fairness, as big as you and therefore a rather impressive feat, and began slowly backing away from the figure that came out of the truck.

 

“Hey!” he called out gruffly.

 

“That was an accident,” you blurted out.  “No harm done, I didn’t even break the window properly, I’m just gonna… just… back away now,”

 

The man bristled in surprise at your accent, but continued advancing. You noticed he had a piece on him, secured in a holster and honestly looked like the cleanest person in the apocalypse that you’d seen in a while. In fact, he was even dressed as a cop – or what you supposed cops in America were supposed to look like.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m just – going to be on my way now –“

 

The man held up both his arms in what you supposed was a surrendering motion, looking you over curiously – behind him, you saw a woman coming out, a black woman with an impressively long sword. They both just stared at you, mostly at how you were dressed, and the fact you looked like you’d probably been on the roads longer than you even realised, because it showed.

 

“Who’re you? Where are your people?” was the first thing he barked out, making you blink slowly and continue backing away, eyes refusing to leave the gun that he had holstered. You’d had a gun – in your gym bag you were carrying, but it was long out of bullets, which left you very much up shitcreek.

 

You cursed internally, these were probably more junkyard rats, but, you mused, they looked a bit too clean for all that. Still, anything you’d heard about human communities here – having spied in bushes and pilfered here and there, it wasn’t good, so you just kept moving. You decided to put the sledgehammer back on your back, using the makeshift strap you’d made out of old clothes sleeves, you slowly placed your gym bag down – at least that didn’t have anything in it, and slowly detached the kirpan, putting it on top of your bag and putting your hands behind your head without being asked.

 

They looked at you strangely.

 

“Don’t hurt me okay? You’re clearly packing more heat than I am – I’m just – I’m just scavenging. Like anyone else whose alive I guess,” your voice was crackly and hoarse from not having interacted with a living human being in months, you were more than a little rusty. “It’s just me, on my own.  I um. People called me Deadshot back when I had people. I don’t anymore,”

 

The man looked at his people before putting a hand out in a calming gesture, letting you know you could have your knife on you and pick your things up, and that they weren’t going to take anything from you after a moment of silent deliberation.

 

“We’re not gonna hurt you,” said the man calmly “-Did you walk yourself here?”

 

You heard your stomach rumble loudly, and frankly, so did they, but they didn’t react. You just glanced down at your boots and nodded, hoping to God they’d believe you. The black woman murmured some things to him, which seemed to put him at ease, you didn’t know what, but it seemed she had a good eye for recognising lone wolves, and you were definitely one. She had been one herself, so she could see it clearly in you.

 

“Well,” the man cleared his throat “-That’s an awful big walk, how long have you been on the road?”

 

You cringed, and it was at that moment you realised that you didn’t know, and from the clueless look on your face, they gathered as much too.

 

“What month is it?”

 

“April,” he said shortly.

 

You blinked, it was April when you left – which means – oh God. Fucking Christ. You’d been walking with the dead for…that long?! They watched as you innocently looked at your hands and started counting on your fingers to be sure in what was a very childlike gesture, because in truth, you just weren’t very good at math in your mind. You were very much a sharp sort but you worked messily, and on paper, like a mad genius – as far as your mentor had been concerned.

 

“Like, a year?” you said quietly, disbelief wheedling in your tone, clearly you hadn’t quite got to grips with it yourself. “Anyway, I think I should be asking you who you are and who your people are. I haven’t run into a single good one since I’ve been out on my own. I ain’t heard nowt good about the people in these parts,”

 

“That is…fair,” the man acquiesced, supposing you’d heard of the Saviors.

 

“My name is Rick Grimes – and this is Michonne, do you mind if I ask how old you are?” he said gently, because you couldn’t have been too much older than Enid, he was judging on your height, but your body screamed woman. You were wondering around the apocalypse in a bra and blood covered denim trousers and mountain boots, with a figure that put all of the men he knew to shame in terms of defined muscle. It was a weird sight, to be sure, but he couldn’t judge your age from your chest, or your height, so he just asked.

 

“Um…?” you gave him a clueless look and replied “-does that even matter anymore? I think I’m…twenty? Maybe nineteen? Look, I don’t know. I think I’ve…lost track of time,” you crackled out.

 

It was at that point that Rick made a decision.

 

“Well, you sound hungry, and I have a good group – a good town. Alexandria, not a few miles north of here. We were on a run too – you can help us and come back. I insist on it,” he said.

 

You frowned, and said you didn’t do groups, only for Michonne to cut in.

 

“We have running water,” she said “-and food, medicine,” she glanced at your exposed torso “-clean clothes, and not enough people that know how to fight. It’d be nice if you came with us at least for a little while, then you can go on your way, if you want,”

 

Rick marvelled at how she had the perfect answer, but it was because Michonne had been exactly in the same sort of position, only she had been older, had clothes and more supplies, and had a better lay of the land than you. She looked at you and saw a highly capable woman, but also someone who needed help, and lots of it.

 

At the sight of your empty water and the sound of your scratchy voice, she silently reached into a brown bag and tossed you an unopened bottle, making you stare at it in disbelief, then at her, before thanking her and clearing the entire thing in seconds.

 

It was the only thing you’d had in days and it showed.

 

“Who were your old people?” Rick asked warily, it seemed both had made the decision to take you home like an errant puppy, but you just shrugged – and figured they’d want to make sure you weren’t one of the disreputable folk known in these parts.

 

“I ain’t a Junkrat if that’s what you wanna know, my people are all the way in Louisiana, and with any luck, they stay there. It’s just me Sir,”

 

Yeah. Just you. You needed him to believe that if he was to trust you, it just seemed so impossible in how hard it was to survive in a world like this, but it was true. Michonne had done it, so couldn't have others? Rick mused.

 

You were surprised with how much they just trusted you because you were alone and didn’t seem like a threat, you went as far as to open your bag and show them you didn’t actually have any guns. Inside was dismally empty, you handed him the gun and told him you ran out of rounds a long time ago, and just kept it in case you happened across any.

 

“The last time I did, I was robbing some old redneck’s shack – but I haven’t got that lucky in a while,” you’d said, making him smile weakly, and take the gun. Rick was surprised personally by how much of a non-problem you were, doing things without even him having to say it, clearly you’d been dealing with not very good people or at least, knew how the survival game worked.

 

Inside your bag, he didn’t react to the scant feminine supplies, he was just surprised at the sight of portable CD player but no earphones, two clearly well-read books, and some rolled up maps and A-Zs, some from Louisiana and some of Virginia, where you were now and some pens that you’d used to make markings on them with. You really didn’t have a lot – there wasn’t even any food in there, just a twinkie wrapper.

 

“You like music?” he said, trying to make a slightly less strained conversation, because the air was stupidly tense. You gave him a strange look, and glanced at the woman, who was just watching him go through your things with her arms folded over her tank top.

 

“I like to listen with one ear – it’s better than being left with my own thoughts but you have to listen out for things too. My earbuds broke,” you said, feeling your throat ache, you winced. It had been a long time since you’d used properly it beyond muttering insults at walkers to yourself.

 

“Smart,” Rick praised, before making an effort to soften his tone, looking you over and considering the fact you’d been on the road this long and had survivor scrawled all over you, more so than most. “If we find some, we’ll bring them and you can see if they work,”

 

You mumbled a thank you, frowning at him in confusion, in truth you were waiting for that penny to drop, for the big reveal that they were in fact, not good people. Waiting, and waiting – in truth, a day into being in Alexandria, you were still waiting.

 

Michonne looked at you warily, like she was also ready for you to reveal you weren’t as good as your forthcoming actions portrayed you as, and to be honest, you were more comfortable around that than Rick’s attempt at being kind. Kindness was never to be trusted. They noticed that you were silent and methodical, wielding your sledgehammer with more strength than some fully grown men, and how you span like a whirlwind of death when you got out a curved knife and one from a kitchen. It wasn’t just fighting, it was clearly a style – you were definitely skilled. Highly skilled. Enough that from having you on their run they could now make sense of how you survived for a year on your own.

 

“We have people closer to your age at Alexandria,” said Rick when you got in the jeep with him. “-My boy Carl, he’s seventeen,” he said conversationally, apparently unable to bare the awkward silence since he couldn’t really talk with his lover the way he usually would with this strange, other presence in the vehicle. “There’s others,”

 

You shrugged and stared blankly ahead, feeling your legs ache with relief as you watched the houses become a blur as he sped down the road, your stomach somewhat filled with the water but still no solids – it rumbled loudly.

 

“And food,” said Rick helpfully “-when was the last time you ate?”

 

You frowned and closed your eyes for a moment, sighing deeply – you really didn’t trust this, but maybe they were like the guy at the pharmacy, they gave off good vibes, you could tool-up and leave, the sword lady – Michonne? She said as much. That thought comforted you.

 

“Four days ago I had a twinkie which somehow hadn’t gone bad. Mostly because I don’t think they were ever good. It was probably mostly chemicals anyway. Americans aren’t good at candy,” you said bluntly.

 

“You’re British, aren’t you?” said Rick, latching onto it the moment you otherised everyone in the jeep, making you almost be sarcastic in response along the lines of ‘figure all that out on your own?’ but considering you were hoping they’d be good people, pissing them off probably wasn’t smart.

 

“English, yeah. I was in the country with my family during the collapse. Airport. Long story. Still getting used to walking for miles upon miles without so much as seeing a petrol station. Your country is decadently big,” you accused, stretching, and taking the moment to relax your aching body.

 

“You can explain in your own time, I think you need some food and some rest,” said Rick “-you’ve been very helpful for someone running on empty,”

 

“I’m always running on empty,” you said with a yawn “-it’d be nice to sleep without waking up every hour to survey the area, y’know I slept in a tree once?” This was the most you’d talked in a while, and your vocal chords ached at the sensation.

 

“That’s…creative, but walkers can’t climb, so smart as long as you don’t fall out,” Rick said, driving in a manner you found entirely too relaxed for what was a strange situation.

 

“Walkers? Is that what you call them?” you said curiously, making him glance at you briefly before turning back to the road.

 

“Yeah, what do you call them?”

 

You shrugged.

 

“In the bayou we just called them rotters, ‘cos… well… yeah,” you said lamely, even the terminology you used sounded painfully British to him, but it was a fitting name all the same, making him hum quietly in agreement.

 

“Come across many on the road?” he said.

 

“A herd, north of here, small – wanna say like, thirty?”

 

Rick wondered what qualified as small in your world, but didn’t react.

 

“Came through them, did the undead shuffle – they’re not really smart, y’know? If it walks like a rotter, moans like a rotter, smells like a rotter, they’ll pretty much just bugger off,”

 

Rick cringed at the idea of a young woman only slightly older than Carl making their way through this world on their own, covered in blood and guts in a herd of thirty people, and Michonne couldn’t say she was fond of the idea, but didn’t react outwardly.

 

“We uh, we know, it’s a good trick, disgusting but it works, unless it rains,” said Michonne, finally saying something. “You can also just have them follow you around, if you take out their teeth,”

 

You nodded – and wanted to say you had one, but didn’t want to get into that whole fucking story with them, there was no real way to spin keeping your dead mother around until she rotted so much she couldn’t walk anymore, so you just kept silent after that.

 

Upon arriving in Alexandria, you were floored with how undisturbed it looked – they had impressive gate-work, not the best you’d seen, but impressive. They had huge, sprawling homes and a cosy sort of community setup.

 

You really, really hoped they were good people.

 

A man in slacks and a flannel opened the gate for you, letting Rick drive straight in and park up in one of the garages, before pulling you out by the hand. A woman who was on the outpost that leered over the gate came down – she seemed a bit more on the curvy side like yourself, but tall, with hair tide back and rather pretty, in your opinion.

 

“How was the run?” before realising he’d come back with company, and glancing at Rick warily “-Whose this?”

 

“It was a decent haul, not great for food but we got more clothes, knives and amenities in. This is – what did you say your name was again?”

 

“Just call me Deadshot. I don’t do names,” you said shortly, before realising how rude you sounded, you cleared your dry throat and elaborated. “I mean, I probably won’t be around for long and I don’t do that whole….attachment thing, learning names and all that. People come in and go out, that’s just how it is, how I am,”

 

Rick found that to be rather pessimistic, but he understood the reasoning, and glanced at Tara with a small, tired smile.

 

“She accidentally launched a walker head at our jeep with her sledgehammer. She helped us on a run to apologise for it – she’s capable Tara, so I thought I’d bring her back with us,” Rick elaborated. He wanted to say that it was because you didn’t seem that much older than Enid and Carl and despite being a full-figured, blatantly strong woman, you were running on fumes and didn’t even have a shirt on your back. But he didn’t want to patronise you.

 

Tara noticed, and didn’t bother masking the appreciative stare because it happened before she realised she was doing it, not that you cared much.

 

“Yeah you look pretty strong,” said Tara finally. “I’m Tara,” she gestured to the expanse of houses behind her lamely.

 

“Welcome to Alexandria, I guess.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

You pieced together a few things, first that there was more than one community, there was a place called the Hilltop, The Kingdom, something ominously dubbed “The Compound” – and Alexandria, and from what you gathered, these people had been through some rather trying times of their own. They had just warred with another faction, you didn’t care much for the details, just that they’d lost people.

 

That was why you didn’t do communities, too much in-fighting. You were already surrounded by predators, you didn’t need to put yourself willingly in the viper’s nest, which is what you likened communities to, in front of Rick.

 

Oh yeah, the first thing that became apparent was your abject lack of community spirit. You were about as talkative as a rock and everything about you was an extreme curiosity. When you got there, you took to wearing a sports bra as a shirt and changed into some combat trousers that weren’t waterlogged with blood, and honestly presented in a somewhat masculine manner, exerting more physical and outward strength than a lot of the soft people in Alexandria.

 

Needless to say, you didn’t fit in with the kid’s much, even the survivor girl – Enid, didn’t much speak to you, which was fine by you. There was a gangly boy – Carl, the one that Rick mentioned, who had an eyepatch that you glanced at for a moment, before resuming your business. True to promise, they had food – dried military mac n’ cheese which you had missed. A lot. It even had chilli – or what white people thought passed for chilli anyway, but you weren’t about to complain. You were given a house, your own house – a whole _entire_ house just because they had one spare, making you look at Rick uncertainly.

 

“Alexandria is a big place, full of promise. We lost a lot of people, but we have space for more,” he said quietly.

 

“I’m just passing through but, thanks, for – for everything,” you said.

 

Rick gave you a silent, critical stare, he observed the almost bodybuilder-respectable muscle in your back, and the strength in your arms and your torso, and how you seemed so close to feral from how long you’d been out in the wild. You were just, to him, a young girl – a woman – out on her own, in a very dangerous place. You needed to stay. Alexandria needed people like you, it was something Deanna never quite got to grips with when she was alive, but Rick knew. He knew exactly what it took to survive, and they’d already lost so much.

 

“I hope that the longer you stay here, the more we can try to change your mind, find me if you have any problems,” he said after a moment, before telling you in the morning there was going to be a small community meeting with the centrefold of his people, the ones who more or less governed Alexandria with their strength, and that they would meet you properly.

 

You slept – not well, due to your habits, but better than you’d slept in a very long time, and you even had the luxury of a hot shower, which made your aching bones almost sing with relief. The fact that when you opened your pantry, there had been some food left in there by Rick’s people, that was just so normal and so shocking that you stood there, holding a tin of beans, trying not to cry.

 

It was funny what ended up hitting you hard in the apocalypse.

 

You ate and joined the gathering of people, and just let their voices wash all over you, silently surveying the crowd and the community members who’d come together. You were mostly impressed with the man you saw practicing fighting with a long stick. It reminded you of Gatka – the classes your mother used to take you to, only, you’d be wielding a wooden sword. You saw a priest, and didn’t know whether to laugh or just stare. How could anyone Godly be left in this shitshow? Then again, Alexandria also had a church, so you weren’t surprised. Finally, you tuned into the conversation, feeling sets of eyes on you.

 

“-trust her, Rick? That she doesn’t have people?” – you heard one of them say, a woman with a complexion slightly lighter than yours whose name you’d learn was Rosita.

 

“There were no cars or camps for miles out we’d have seen if she was with anybody, so far, she checks out, and she helped us on our run, and to be honest, has been more than forthcoming with us. She’s skilled too, and we need more of that. Now more than ever,” said Rick.

 

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” the woman said, leaving brusquely.

 

Then, blah, blah, blah – some sort of power talk after losing people in their stupid faction war, honestly, you really didn’t care and you practically exuded that fact with your arms crossed under your chest and a bored expression on your face. For a second, you couldn’t have looked more teenager than you did in that moment.

 

Tara had sidled up to you, and you found her presence rather nice – something about her gave off an honesty you couldn’t pinpoint, so you stood next to her considering she was the first to welcome you in.

 

“-What about Negan? Do we kill him yet?”

 

“We keep him prisoner. We don’t just kill, besides, we have to take care of the remaining Saviors. Keeping him is an example to them,” said Rick.

 

God, you were bored. You wanted to try sleeping in that nice bed some more, if you were honest. Blah, blah, blah...more talking you didn’t much care for because it didn’t seem relevant to you because you didn’t plan to hang around. The next thing seemed to be giving people new jobs to do, there was a lot of clean-up and holes to fill after they’d gone to war with the Saviors, because people had lost a lot.

 

You had no desire to get in with the community, nor did you give off any sense of community spirit, not even slightly. You were happy to go on runs, but you didn’t like being forced into a team, even though you could see the logic of it, you still didn’t really like it. You didn’t want to work their kitchens even if you were good at it, or help keep track of supplies, which used to be some woman called Olivia’s job, and they didn’t want to let you near all of the guns until they were absolutely certain you were trusted. Which was a shame, because you were excellent at packing and making bullets from your time in the Louisana bayou community.

 

“Fine, I can watch your prisoner or whatever, I don’t care. I’m not all about this community spirit stuff, I’m not even gonna be here long so I’d prefer to not really…bond with you guys. I mean, I’m sure you’re nice. You seem nice. But I move around. A lot. That’s how I’ve been surviving,” you said curtly.

 

“That’s a lonely way to survive,” said Tara, making you shrug. You didn’t want to tell them it wasn’t always that way, everyone had their own stories and you didn’t feel like spilling yours out. It just didn’t matter, not to them. You were a temporary cog in their community and they’d you’d roll out, simple as that.

 

“Are you sure we can trust her with him?” this was a woman with grey hair who looked like a survivor, but Rick just gave you a long, critical look before replying.

 

“I don’t know, but he’s in a cell, and if we don’t give her the key, I don’t really see the harm in her doing a shift. We can’t leave it all to Morgan,” said Rick, glancing at his very tired, but non-complaining friend – the one with the stick, you realised.

 

“He is manipulative,” Carl muttered “-they should rotate shifts, dad.”

 

“I don’t plan on socialising, in case that went over anyone’s heads,” you butted in crisply, giving them your bitchiest expression.

 

Rick sighed and asked if this was really what you wanted, you shrugged, not wanting to be a burden on them while you were there, you were happy to do whatever job kept you somewhat isolated but not a moocher. He reached into his pockets as he walked over to you, dismissing the meeting, and silently handed you some earbuds he found on the run.

 

“Forgot to give you these. Watching Negan isn’t an exciting job, so let’s hope those work,”

 

You thanked him and stared at him, as though still waiting for that penny to drop, before plugging them into your portable CD player. You only had one CD. But it was a damn good one and it was going to be nice to be able to hear it again.

 

“Negan, the guy you were fighting with? Saviors? Sorry I kind of faded out for a moment – I haven’t been around this many people in a while so I wasn’t really all there,” you admitted, making him nod understandingly. This was probably horribly disorienting for you, he realised, and now – your choice to just watch a prisoner instead of get involved made more sense, and his stare softened considerably.

 

“He’s not a good man. He’s killed a lot of our people. Good people. Personally – cruelly, you can ask anyone in Alexandria about him and get the picture. I would advise you just listen to your music, and don’t talk to him,” said Rick firmly.

 

You shrugged again, smiling for the first time in weeks as music filled your left ear when you put the earbud to it, eyes glittering with the first bit of happiness you’d felt in a while.

 

“Hey, they work!”

 

* * *

 

 

 

You were starting to wonder how good these people were, one thing you’d read in your books was that you should not judge a person by how they treat their friends, but how they treat their enemies, and those who aren’t, and from the state of the man in the cell, you weren’t sure what to think.

 

There was a designated bathroom bucket and an empty plate of what you supposed was eaten food, and the room smelled of sweat, leather and bleach – which you supposed was an attempt to clean said bucket. You looked and saw a leather jacket on the floor of the cell, which you supposed had been taken off because it was a disgustingly hot day. The room was smaller than the other rooms in the house, and you noticed the windows had been blacked out with material to stop too much light coming in, or rather, so people didn’t peer in.

 

You’d seen worse setups to be honest, it could have been a lot more horrible than it was, but it wasn’t good.

 

You found yourself a beanbag chair from your home and dragged it over the second you saw that the room didn’t have anything comfortable beyond a horrid wooden chair for you, and sank yourself into it, earbuds in your ears and clearly blasting music so loud that it could be heard a little bit in the dead silence of the room. You laid eyes on the slumped figure – it had your back turned to you, and was that of a somewhat toned looking older man. He had some battered trousers on, even worse for wear trainers, and a white tank top which was now heavy with sweat and turning off-colour from passive dirtying.

 

You glanced at him and reached into your gym bag, shuffling it around in the process, apparently making enough noise to wake him – but didn’t notice, as you were blasting Warren Zevon’s ‘ _Excitable Boy’_ album in your ears, something you’d long missed, it was ’07 CD remaster too, so the sound was much crisper than your mother’s old vinyls had been.

 

You felt his stare on you, but kept the well-read book over your nose. The album took up about thirty minutes back to back, with you eventually humming along to your favourite track – _Werewolves of London –_ now this was music, you mused. You were glad to find it, you didn’t think many Americans had good taste, so this was a golden needle in an absolutely shit-coated haystack. It was a good book you were reading too.

 

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn – about a man who applies for a job being a pupil to a teacher who wants to “save the world”. Said teacher is a gorilla which communicates telepathically, a silly concept but executed flawlessly. Now you were older, you understood the big concepts it alluded to. Mythological thinking, the effect of modern civilisation on ethics, and it’s relation to societal collapse and sustainability. It got rid of this idea that humans were somehow the pinnacle of human evolution.

 

It was quite topical, you thought.

 

It had powerful themes too, which, again, relating to captivity and all the Socratic dialogue you managed to make sense of was fascinating, forcing you to take a new meaning each time you read it. You glanced over the book, and saw the huddled man staring at you through hooded eyes. He was probably in his 40s, a handsome sort of face buried underneath a salt and pepper beard, but he looked worse for wear, like he hadn’t slept well in a long time. You could relate to that.

 

About thirty minutes in and your music ended. You spent a few hours in silence with nothing but the page turning before Morgan took over – and that’s just how it was, for a while anyway. The book of choice was an annoyingly accurate one, you thought, which spurned your idea to try to talk to Negan.

 

A horrible idea, probably. You didn’t plan to socialise much but what would be the harm in doing it with a guy who was in a cell anyway? Besides, you were overdosing on Warren Zevon at the moment and devastatingly close to finishing your book for the fourth time.

 

You knew the album was going to loop again when you sat on your beanbag chair, and pulled the earbuds out, turning the CD player off and quietly putting it away. You looked up from your book and contemplated shuffling the beanbag chair over to the bars, but remember how dangerous the man allegedly was, you kept the distance as it was, putting a bit of scrap paper in as a bookmark despite having read the book so many times.

 

“People call me Deadshot,” you said after a moment, seeing him look up at you with burning curiosity now – your accent was the first thing to break the silent atmosphere, and it did so rather sharply. You waited for him to say something – his name back - but he didn’t, he just stared at you openly, like you were some sort of strange creature that appeared from nowhere.

 

In a way, you sort of were.

 

“You’re Negan right?”

 

He scoffed, as if you didn’t know, but you had the sort of look about you that actually made out like you really didn’t know. You were definitely a new face, but he presided over so many communities and people that he wouldn’t have known who you were even if you weren’t a new addition, so he’d just assumed you were a resident he’d never bothered to take note of before.

 

But the way you spoke, implied strongly that you weren’t.

 

“Do you want a book or something?” you sighed, looking at the overwhelming emptiness of his cell – it was usually Morgan who brought his food, but this time, it was you, sliding him a sandwich under the bars of the cell as he stayed in his corner, with chains loosely around his ankles.

 

Jesus. They really didn’t want him getting out any time soon. Not even for the bathroom – hence bucket, you supposed they could just let him out and have him in a stress position, but that would require someone watching him go with a gun to the head. God. There was just no humane way of doing it, so they’d given him a damn bucket.  It was about the only thing in his cell besides the jacket, which you saw him use as a blanket in a manner you found, admittedly, quite sad.

 

“I want out,” Negan said hoarsely, making you grimace and turn your head away from him. Yeah, this was probably why Rick said not to talk to him. You’d been in his position before, and it fucking sucked. You rose up off of the beanbag chair and sighed, watching as his eyes raked along your figure, you didn’t blame him, you showed a lot of it off, not many women (or men for that matter) looked like you, and you worked damn hard for it.

  
He watched you root around in your bag for a protein bar that was recovered on a scavenge, a horrid, tasteless thing which was mostly chemicals, but good for you, and something you ate often if you found one. You moved the beanbag chair a few centimetres closer – not too much, but a bit, and sat back down.

 

“Can’t do that old man,” you said with a half-shrug “-even if I wanted to. No key. I’m new here so they don’t trust me that much yet and I don’t plan to stick around long enough till they do,” you paused, gesturing at the plate.

 

“You should eat,”

 

“Why?” said Negan darkly “I’m only going to shit it out and deal with that until someone deigns to clean it up,”

 

 

You winced at the man’s bluntness but respected it, having been captured before, you’d taken a similar approach in the past, but with Alexandria seeming as civilised as it was, this was especially cruel.

 

“I’m getting you a new bucket,” you said after a moment of deliberation.

 

“Whoop-de-fuckin’-do,” said Negan sarcastically in response. You didn’t blame him, but hesitantly pushed your fingers through the bars after getting up so you could slide the plate insistently to his feet as much as you could, before quickly retracting it.

 

It was as close as you’d gotten to him, and it felt rather like poking your hand through a tiger cage. When he finally took the damn sandwich, you started eating your hideous protein bar, and couldn’t help but think he had the better deal – his at least had fresh tomatoes in it.

 

You ate together in silence, with you pulling a face of visible disgust, before screwing up the wrapper with a grimace. Okay. That had been pretty nasty. You glanced at the aforementioned shitbucket and sighed. That needed to be cleaned and bleached more than it was if this is how they had to do things. This wasn’t just wasn’t right though, they should either put him out of his misery or torture him to death or whatever macabre thing they wanted to do as revenge for what he did to their people, not do this halfway shit where they can make like they’re better people than him for doing so.

 

You said as much to Rick later, who grimaced at how harsh you were, and acquiesced to you eventually (and only when Morgan trusted you enough) – having a key to put some things in his cell. Nothing he could escape or hurt himself with, Rick had said.

 

Huh, was that his game? Make him hate his life so much he ended it on his own? Your mind were awash in thoughts, contemplating what you thought of Rick and his people. On one hand, Rick was very sweet to you and seemed to want to trust you, and his group reluctantly acquiesced to it – on the other hand…this.

 

You spoke to the stick guy – Morgan – about it, and he could see where you were coming from, truly, but went out of his way to assure you that Rick was a good man, these were good people, and Negan? Negan just wasn’t.

 

He told you why, and considering what you learned – the barbed wire baseball bat and all? Shit, that sounded nasty, you were surprised they weren’t flat-out torturing him, instead going for this bizarre half-measure.

 

“Okay but you can’t pretend like you’re doing a good thing by going for some weird half-measure like this. Even if you think it’s more than he deserves, we should at least clean the fucking bucket out more, get him a new one even, y’know. Make it a little…humane? You should strive to be better than your enemies,” you bit out.

 

Morgan could agree with that, but it took your devastating sort of English sharpness to drive that home to Rick, who decided to leave the managing of Negan almost entirely to Morgan. It seemed he trusted Morgan a great deal, and apparently, he’d done something like this before.

 

Yeah, you really didn’t know how to feel about Alexandria, but at least they weren’t unreasonable. You watched with your own two eyes as Morgan unlocked the man’s cell, took the bucket out, put a new one down and left. It wasn’t much, but it was something – but the guy didn’t react, he just stared at the bucket blankly.

 

You wondered how long he’d been the Alexandrian’s prisoner.

 

“A few weeks,” Morgan said, when you asked “-we’re still picking up all the pieces,” he said, no hint of bitterness in his tone but certainly in his choice of words.

 

Huh, no wonder.

 

For someone they were worried about manipulating you, he didn’t actually engage with you much, it seemed that he was swallowing the idea that he’d lost, well and truly. Absolutely, he’d lost – he had nothing now, and it felt like every day was another day on death row, waiting for his number to be called, waiting to die. He couldn’t help but think this was poetic irony, because he’d done this sort of thing to people before in his isolation chambers, granted, it was a little more human about bathroom breaks, it surrounded people in pitch black darkness and was much, much smaller.

 

But hey, no fucking chains.

 

Negan would be lying though if he said he wasn’t bored, if he wasn’t sick of his own fucking thoughts, sick of thinking about the battle, sick of thinking about losing, how much he was scared to die, enough that he almost killed Carl. Negan actually liked the kid too, but all that went out of the window when it came to his mortality.

 

Without his Saviors, and his power, he had to muse that he really was a sad sack of shit, the difference was, he was a smart, sad-sack-of-shit who was good at surviving. Rick Grimes had that quality too, except, he was good at leading – better than Negan, and didn’t need fear to do it.

 

Not the way Negan did.

 

You wondered around Alexandria when your shift was over and found your only real company to be Tara, even though you didn’t want to make friends, the fact that she was the one who willingly exchanged words with you the most while Rick and Michonne went and did things made her your de-facto friend.

 

“Do you know where you’re going after us?” Tara had asked, she saw you studying maps outside under the bleating sun, you just shrugged.

 

“I wanted to get to one of the Hawaiian islands but all the boats are going to be defunct or taken, I’d have to find something seaworthy. The idea was to find a finite space that’s easy to secure and island is a good idea, but that’s probably what everyone thought, so they’ll be communities there that might either be good or bad, or they’ll be overrun with rotters that I’ll have to take care of on my own. Assuming I even got there,” you said in irritation.

 

You thought about this a lot more than most people would assume people living day to day would, that much was clear.

 

“You could stay,” said Tara with a small encouraging smile. “I know I’d like to get to know you, I think a lot of us would, you seem pretty…different,”

 

“We’re a finite space,” Tara added “-y’know, with walls, and people that – well – I mean, you’ll see for yourself if you stay, we’re good people,”

 

Good enough to make a man shit in a bucket, you wanted to say, but held your tongue. She really did seem rather sweet – but you didn’t trust people. Not very easily. You slept with one eye open, figuratively, and still got up every few hours out of paranoia and anxiety. Being on the outside had kind of made you a hard and prickly sort, and being in a place like this might make you soft – but wasn’t that the goal? Making a place like this?

 

“Besides, aren’t you kinda lost feeling? Wandering around like this?” she pushed, and you nodded reluctantly.

 

“Yeah, America is… I mean I could walk for miles and miles without seeing anything, for all that I’ve walked, if I’d been in England, I’d have gone through three cities at least,” you sighed.

 

“So, think about it?” said Tara with a small smile, making you shrug.

 

“Time’ll tell. If I think you guys are dodgy I’m outta here like a shot, and I don’t mind sayin’ that – because trying to get my slippery arse is damn near impossible and you’d need all the help you can get if you wanted to try,” you said with a smirk.

 

Yeah, Tara thought she’d like you – you seemed fun, especially with how Rosita had been treating her as of late. It had been a while since she felt like she had a friend, one who wasn’t dead, or angry or mourning. Someone who was just there to talk to – it helped that Tara found you quite pretty, and while she didn’t expect anything, it made her want to find your company a bit more, enthralled with curiosity. So, you spent all of your free time not watching Negan either training - especially now you had access to food and protein, or trying to figure out what your plan B was. Rick came over to speak to you, to ask you about your people and why you left, you told him it was the same reason anybody left, and that it wasn't safe anymore.

 

You let him assume your community fell to walkers, you were lying by omission, but some things you just wanted to leave in your past, and how dangerous the Louisiana bayou was, was definitely one of them. You still had no idea what plan B was in case this place fell, I mean, they got into wars, right? Battles with factions? You didn't want to get tied in with that shit, that's one of the better reasons to keep on moving. You were fine before Rick Grimes found you, and you'd be fine after.

 

You just had to fucking plan.

 

That's why, now you were trusted with longer shifts, your legs were propped up on the beanbag chair and the front of your torso spread out over the cool floor, your bare abdomen resting against it as you used the fact it was a good, flat surface to spread your maps over. It was an odd position to be sure, when you weren't kicking your legs in an admittedly rather teenager-looking posture, you were resting them on the beanbag, earphones in with your only CD on low, drawing out things from your smaller, more irrelavant maps you'd used to get to Virginia onto your new, big map. Things in your other ones had been marked on the border and just before the map faded out, so you needed to put it on the big one now, which showed your current location.

 

At this point, Negan was just a background feature for you, and you didn't care that you felt his eyes on you.

 

He watched as you picked up a pencil and chewed on it, drawing things on your map. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him and he silently crawled over as much as his chains would allow, it was their clinking which made you look up, hearing it over the low music to see Negan curiously leering over as much as he could, casting an eye on your maps.

 

He saw you'd named and circled places - he saw "Compound?" where he recognised his own place, Hilltop, the Kingdom, then places he didn't recognise, like _Prescott_ over the airstrip and then the capital city, Richmond, but it had a massive cross over it - and just a few words etched out in pencil.

 

_BAD PEOPLE - The New Frontier._

 

It was stupidly childish, but also a painfully innocent way of putting it - he wanted to ask what the city capital Richmond was like now - or "New Richmond" as you had added the word 'New' to it - , but took one look at your face and saw that it was immensely distracted. You were erasing lines which looked like old foraging routes, and getting out a black pen to cross out Richmond and some other places. To the east, he saw you'd made your own little dots for settlements you'd come across from spying at a distance, pilfering from in the night before leaving.

 

 _BAD PEOPLE - Highway Hounds -_ on a certain part of the highway.

 

 _BAD PEOPLE - Junkrats -_ a place which was clearly a junkyard. _  
_

 

Negan could say that, some of these people being as far as they were, he didn't actually know them, aside from hearing about some vaguely, he didn't actually make contact, and some he didn't know at all, the only place with a small tick under it was Prescott, but that had been crossed out, as it was a place you'd already been.

 

You had Alexandria marked on there, and didn't know if they were bad people or not, instead, all he saw was a question mark, a great big "?" over the area.

 

"What're you doing?" Negan asked eventually, unable to stop himself.

 

You flinched at the sudden question, before taking an earbud out and looking at him in surprise, enough that you dropped what you were writing with and it rolled onto the floor under his cell, hitting his foot silently, making him grab it and run his finger along it as he turned it pen-side to himself as though trying to assure he wasn't actually going to stab you with the fucking thing.

 

Because he could have, if he wanted to be a dick. You reached out through the bars slowly as though waiting for him to pounce, only for him to hand you the pen silently - holding it firmly for a moment when your fingers grasped it - because for one electric moment, through the bars, you were quite close. Closer than you'd been yet, and he was staring at you intensely with his horribly tired stare, which mirrored your own, but seemed heavy with its own burdens, before letting go of the end of the pen and letting you scramble back to your maps.

 

Yeah, that had been maybe slightly too close than you were probably allowed to be.

 

"Making a Plan B, in case I don't stay, or something happens," you said with a shrug "-I don't know America very well so... lots of maps,"

 

It was a big country to be fair and even if you were American born and bred, you'd probably still need about as many.

 

"You're British," said Negan after a long moment, he'd been curious since you opened your mouth but hadn't been in the mood to talk, when you specified English, you saw a flash of a smile behind his beard, but it left just as quickly as it came.

 

"Yeah, I was in an airport during the collapse," you said curtly, as if that explained everything, and in a way it sort of did, at least, in the bluntest manner possible - and while he was curious to know more, he didn't need to know more, so for the moment, he didn't push it. He didn't want you to go silent on him like your first day there, and he rather liked the sound of your voice, it was certainly better than his own thoughts, and it had a certain charm to it, he had to admit.

 

"Shitty luck," Negan commented, pressing his face to the bars - not for the first time, getting a good look at your maps.

 

"You've managed to get around though," he said, when you didn't say anything for a good long while, apparently it wasn't just Negan's socialising skills which were rusty, yours were positively horrid after how long you'd spent shambling along with the dead.

 

"What do you think will happen if you stay here?" he asked curiously, maybe you knew something he didn't, he didn't get any news in his fucking cell, after all, he thought scornfully.

 

You shrugged.

 

"Maybe these people turn out dodgy - I mean look what they're doing to you, or maybe they keep getting into beef, I don't know, didn't they just get done fighting your people? Maybe things get better for me if I stay here, or they get worse before they do - but I'm not a big chance taker, I operate on logic, I was fine before Mr Grimes found me, and I'll be fine long after,"

 

Negan was silent for a long while, before he leaned backwards and went back to his slumped position against the back of the cell, watching you work dilligently, occasionally pausing to pencil chew or chew your own lip in a manner that exuded intense thought. You talked smart, very, very smart - you were clearly a sharp mind, enough that he had to be careful what he said to you. If you had even a vague hint of manipulation on his part, he'd probably lose the only jailor that actually spoke to him and didn't try to browbeat the correct morality into him, like Morgan so often tried.

 

"You won't find better, I can tell you that," said Negan finally, making you look at him in surprise. "Don't get me wrong, this is fucking bullshit right here, what they're doing to me - but you won't find people that operate much better than this. It only gets worse from here on out darlin', if I was you I'd just hedge your bets, use the fact they obviously don't distrust you too much and stay while the easy ride is there,"

 

Huh. He sounded like he had enough experience of his own, you mused - and you'd been in the bayou four years while the world was collapsing, this guy was probably busy building his empire, and seeing it all happen in front of him, he sounded pretty honest too.

 

"Your opinion is duly noted," you said with a sigh "-but I still need a Plan B, 'case this place goes tits up. Settlements fuck up, all it takes is one mistake. Always have a Plan B."

 

"You sound like you've been doing this a while," said Negan, quietly testing the waters.

 

"We're not discussing this anymore,"

 

You shut down at that point and stopped talking, putting your earbuds in and turning the music up in a manner he came to associate with him asking you too many things, he cursed inwardly, and returned to his boredom, staring up at the ceiling as he so often did. You didn't mind talking to him a bit, there didn't seem much danger in relieving him from his cruel and unusual punishment by at least stimulating his mind a little with some conversation, but between that question, Tara, the rest of Rick's people, the curious looks you'd get - and how much you just weren't used to all these people, you just didn't want to spill your guts out. Not when every part of you was telling you not to fix what wasn't broken, keep to your method of moving on, and just fucking leave.

 

People getting close to you, trying to integrate you as a permanent part of their community, people trying to get to know you - that just made everything so much harder, and the kind of place you came from? Fuck, how did anyone even begin to talk about that shit? You'd need a PhD in psychology or something to even handle that Pandora's box of bullcrap, and you weren't ready to sit and engage with it. You were searching for safety ever since you left the bayou, safety and independance, but if you couldn't feed yourself - like when you left and struggled to find anything that wasn't rotten, maybe you needed to be here.

 

Fucking hell.

 

Just because you could survive, didn't mean you had to - you thought, as you laid in your bed that night, staring up at your own ceiling, sighing and feeling the sensation of bedsheets around you. When was the last time you felt that with any consistency? It had been a long fucking time, to be sure. It was nice here, you had to admit, you had your own fucking building! You were on the property ladder and all it took was the end of the fucking world, fancy that. You were fed for remarkably little work in your eyes, and so far, nobody had done anything untoward and the women here seemed to be treated well, which was much better than the place you had been brought up in.

 

Indeed, part of you kept waiting for that penny to drop, but it never did - and Negan's words hung in your head.

 

It only got worse out from here, there would be no better people than Rick's people. Now you just had to see how much "better" they were - that Rosita woman seemed to have a stick up her ass the size of Texas, there was a guy with a horrid mullet who didn't seem to have any friends, a priest working the church, a grumpy old grandma looking lady, a guy with a crossbow of all things - just - a hodge podge of weirdos, Morgan included and more you didn't even bother to note. Then there was Carl, Enid - and yeah you saw some kids, probably around fifteen years old, but you just felt too old for them, but too young for everyone else.

 

You were a cog that just didn't fit anywhere.

 

You picked up your new book - they at least had those - and started reading until you fell asleep, trying not to think about your long shift tomorrow. You didn't know how to feel about all that shit, truly - you'd gathered enough information to deduce that he was a horrible, horrible man - but it was pretty hard to remind yourself of that when he was curled up in a pile of chains and made to shit in a bucket. Now, you were by no means soft, he definitely deserved it and you certainly wouldn't be putting him in the Ritz any time soon, but it just didn't feel humane. If he even deserved humane.

 

Doesn't everyone deserve humane?

 

Well, you mused, the bayou folk didn't - so what was it your place to tell Rick what he did to his own personal bayou-nightmare? For him, that was Negan, for you - it was a man called Major Chuck.

 

You remembered the shattered look in his face when he handed you your pen - the burning intensity - and how it made your stomach lurch. He just looked so shattered and tired, it was like staring into a mirror at least, when it came to the state of your mutual exhaustion, only you'd been rolling with the dead for months, Negan's came from pure captivity and it was awful to look at. 

 

Morality was hard, was your last thought, before passing out that night.

 


	2. The Boy & the Bucket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> R&R! When I don't feel like working on Dunkelheit, this story will get updated and vice versa - so we can get our fix of the bae.

 

Everyone has their own personal nightmare, for a lot of people, that had been Negan. You had to accept that, and you did – because you had your own. Plenty. You couldn’t sleep that night, like every other night, especially since you got there. It was no surprise when Carl found you outside of the walls, having jumped the gate in the same manner than he and Enid often had. In fact, Rick’s people understood more than most, your need to be on the outside. Where the dead were. It was what you were used to, comfortable with and there was this prevalent fear inside that the longer you were safe, the harder it would be to survive when you weren’t anymore. A fear of going soft, a fear of letting your guard down for half a second would be that half a second that leads to dying. You don’t come back from that. All it took was a bite, now you’d been scratched before, but unless it was a deep, bodily fluid ridden scratch, all you did was douse it in raw alcohol and you hadn’t turned. It was an ugly, discoloured, four-finger scrape that went down your left arm noticeably, but was clearly old, and didn’t warrant anyone’s concern.

 

They said things like being safe there, that they don’t hurt people for no reason there, you remembered cracking slightly when Morgan said it, leaning into the door frame when it was your shift. You were tired, and clearly could do with rest instead of partaking in community work, and he would have let you without telling anyone, but you refused.

 

“Carl said he caught you outside,” said Morgan, making you shrug.

 

“I know the outside. It’s the inside I don’t know,” you didn’t care that the prisoner could hear you, seems Morgan didn’t either, because the topic was you – an anomaly, who didn’t bare too much importance overall. Morgan wanted to tell you that it couldn’t possibly be worse in here than out there, but he saw the sheer level of distrust levelled at him, and fell silent, wondering what he could possibly say.

 

“I heard you asking Tara questions,” he settled on – and you resisted the urge to cringe, instead, folding your arms under your chest. He leaned down, and for a moment he was in your space – because Morgan was a very tall man, and you reached his chest in height. His arm trailed down his stick until he was eye-level with you. He searched everywhere inside of him for the right thing to say, because he felt like he should say something, anything, after knowing the kinds of things you were asking Tara and it made him uncomfortable. It probably got back to Rick too, everything did, especially concerning you, because you were new. The wild card. All it did was give them some very uncomfortable implications, and none of them had the gall to come and question you about it, because you needed to be questioned – to vet your background, but how did any of them brook the subject?

 

It was probably going to be Tara, now you thought about it. Oh yeah, you knew the questions would come. The questions – they always come.

“Did you now?” you replied, giving him an impassive look, showing him that you didn’t care. This was how it had to be, how it always happened, you saw it coming and made no bones of the fact you knew that everything that came out of your mouth was going to end up in Rick’s ear – everyone’s for that matter. While they didn’t trust you fully, that was how it was going to be, Hell, maybe even if they ever did, it could still be how it was going to be.

 

_The women are independent here, right? Like, say I want to go out on my own, say, get pantry food, I don’t need to ask permission from someone else, right? I just sign it in, take a designated ration and go, right?_

 

It was a normal enough question, but the way you’d phrased it had made Tara uncomfortable under her skin, she called you out on it, and you answered bluntly, not one for skirting around the subject.

 

_The women weren’t independent where you come from?_

 

No, you had replied – with a steely sort of glint in your eye – and she looked at all of the exposed parts of your body, the deep, old nail scars from what was surely a walker scratch or a very, very nasty living one. You hadn’t turned, clearly, and it was ancient – so maybe not one. Tara wasn’t sure, she looked at your body and could tell there were more scars along your back under your sports bra, she’d seen them when you’d come in wearing your thin, wired piece. It was a disgusting amount, if she was honest, but they all had varying levels of fade to them, showing that they’d happened at different times in your life. Everyone saw them with how you dressed and Tara noticed with her scrutinising that you had faded puncture wounds. Deep ones once, a flat-out hole in your shoulder too – a small one, but God, it had to have been nasty to push through all of your skin like that.

 

Morgan saw it too, he was around you the most. It looked like the skin around it had burned slightly too, but he knew better than to ask.

 

So he found the perfect words to say, or at least, what he thought were the perfect words.

 

“We don’t hurt little girls in Alexandria,” he said, and made a gentle gesture to your back. You stood in the doorway feeling the pressure of both of their stares, like you were supposed to say something in reply, but instead, you were using all of your power not to shudder. You wiped the sleep out of your left eyelash with the back of your hand, and put your fingers on the door and slowly motioned to shut it, feeling Morgan’s stare beating down on you as intensely as the Virginia sun had.

 

Every part of you wanted to believe him so badly, and he caught the shine in your eyes when you replied, and your voice was low, soft but incredibly damning and spoke volumes of your mistrust and why you had insisted on not staying around for very long.

 

You let the door creak shut slowly, his stare burning into you as you did, your words ringing in his ears like some horrible, haunting melody.

 

“But everywhere hurts little girls – I’ll talk to you later, Morgan.”

 

And that was that, you shut the door with a soft click, and turned to your prisoner – walking to the beanbag chair and ignoring the tense silence that followed your words. The air just seemed thick, like it was all out of water and was just humid, and nasty. The heat didn’t help, so you helped yourself to some fresh, somewhat cool water.

 

When you felt him staring at you, you felt your stomach clench straight after, and stopped halfway, before sliding the bottle silently across the cell bars. He took it wordlessly, but inclined his head as a silent thank you, not willing to break the silence that your heavy words had brought.

 

Everywhere hurts little girls.

 

He watched you fall asleep in that beanbag chair, the book fell out of your lap onto the floor in an open position, losing what page you were on. The earbuds had fallen out – or one had, anyway, with one hand between your knees and your other arm dangling loosely on the side, knuckles brushing the floor. He watched your head tilt right the way back until all he could see was your chin, chest rising and falling steadily.

Then it quickened, and your breathing didn’t seem so even. He watched you turn in the beanbag chair, curling your legs up in on themselves, dragging yourself into a foetal position and lolling your head back forward to tuck it into your chest. You weren’t an easy sleeper, it seemed – and your brow was furrowed, like whatever you were dreaming about wasn’t pleasant.

You were like that for the next twenty minutes, until your eyes darted open and you gave out a short, loud inhale, like you’d just finished running.

 

“Bad dream?” he tried, his voice low and in an attempt to sound gentle, it seemed like watching you was the only hobby he really had between being browbeaten by Morgan.

 

You didn’t reply immediately, stretching with a few painful clicks and picking your book back up, trying to find which page you’d been on and slid the paper back into it as a bookmark.

 

“Don’t remember,” which was only half of a lie, you always remembered bits, but never the whole thing, and that was good, because your mind rarely ever produced a good dream. Most of those died a long time ago.

 

“Didn’t look like a nice dream,” he pushed, before closing the cap on the empty bottle of water.

 

“Does anyone have good dreams anymore? Anyway, don’t tell Morgan I was asleep on the job,” you said dryly, though part of you suspected he wouldn’t actually care, you just wanted to change the topic a bit from his insistent pushing, and it worked. He picked up the empty bottle and passed it through the cell bars which showed you that he didn’t actually want you to get into trouble for giving him something that you probably didn’t have permission to do. As a way of punishing him, Morgan controlled the food, and while he wasn’t super thrilled with doing it this way, he gave the man one decent square meal a day and that was that.

 

So yeah, you probably should have asked about giving him food – he said to ask him before you passed anything through the bars, but what Morgan didn’t know won’t hurt him, you mused.

 

“I’m not a narc,” Negan replied simply, he wasn’t a fool, there was a reason Morgan brought him food and you didn’t – you weren’t trusted that well yet, and it was part of his punishment. One square meal a day. He was usually starving by the time it came around but his stomach was rapidly getting used to having a smaller appetite. To think, merely weeks ago he was eating like a king, and now? This. You glanced up at him as you heard him slowly rise to his feet, chains clinking the whole time.

 

“Well, I gotta take a leak,” he said bluntly, and not caring that you were there, headed for the bucket, making you get up suddenly. You quickly scrambled to your feet and caught sight of his back to you, hearing the sound of his zipper come down, making you flush darkly.

 

“Give me a second, I can give you some privacy – “ you said, headed for the door – only to hear the sound of him pissing and fluid hitting the metal bucket before you even managed to get it open. Jesus Christ. He must really have been in here long enough not to give two shits and a fuck.

 

You opened the door and waited anyway – before feeling something inside you just snap. This was a little bit too close to home for you – and ridiculous. You stormed through the house-turned-jail and looked for any sign of Morgan, only to find yourself alone, meaning he was probably training or doing something with Rick’s group.

 

Fucking ridiculous.

 

Pulling the sink cabinet open with force, you sighed with relief at finding a pair of unused, yellow marigold gloves – and after some more digging, you found a busted cable in the attic and were able to rip the wiring out from the insulation. With all of the authority you could muster, you charged back downstairs, at this point, you didn’t care if Morgan walked in on you doing it.

 

You opened the door with a large swing and stormed in, Negan was now back in his corner, looking at you in confusion.

 

He watched you bend the wire in your fingers into a strange shape, and proceed to shove it into the padlock of his cell.

 

No fucking way.

 

“You could pick the lock the entire fucking time?!” he blurted, watching you jiggle and feel for the sweet spot until the lock came open with a gentle click. He watched as you ignored him, and picked up the bucket, which was in view of the sun streaming in through the poor attempt at window blackout – and suddenly why you had gloves on made sense.

 

“Yes, but where would you go? You’d be shot on sight and we both know it, you have no allies, no plan and nowhere to run so what good is me being able to unlock your cell?” you scrunched your face up in an expression of distaste as the smell of urine got under your nose. The bucket wasn’t heavy, usually it was because it’d be filled before it got emptied, but on this exceptionally hot day, you drew a line.

 

“Morgan can do that, besides, it’s good for a while,” said Negan with a sigh, there was just something about a woman cleaning up his messes – in a literal sense – that was somehow more shameful than everything so far during his captivity.

 

You turned to him with a truly irritated expression, figuring that he should probably be more grateful you were even touching the damn bucket, gloves or not.

 

“Do you know how fuckin’ hot it is? Do you know?” you snapped. “-Look man, do you know what happens to urine under heat? It fucking stinks, and right now, it’s actually hot enough to fry an egg on a car bonnet, meaning it’s boiling temperature. Urine coagulates, okay? It gets gross, like, syrupy, it bubbles, then it dries and it sticks, like, burned-food. The smell will get worse the closer it gets to looking like it’s crystallising, you let it boil it long enough, you’ll get phosphorus. So yeah, I couldn’t find Morgan, but I’m not sitting here and letting the room fill up with the smell of boiled piss, got it?”

 

Negan was silent, and you looked at him and wondered briefly, if you embarrassed him. If you had, it didn’t show – but you tilted your head back and let out a low, guilty groan at his expressionless face. Now you felt like kind of an asshole, it wasn’t exactly this guy’s fault – horrible bastard or not – that he needed to pee, and the way you were talking almost sounded like you were persecuting him for doing so. At least, that’s what it sounded like to your own ears, so you softened considerably when you looked at him, and spoke in a gentler tone.

 

“Look. It’s not your fault. I just didn’t sleep good. It’s… it’s just a fact of life,” you sighed, holding the bucket up a little as you said it. “I’ll try and find something we can use as a sheet or something to stop the smell getting out next time while the day cools off. When Morgan gets back, I’ll tell him to clean it out more while it’s this hot out. Whether he listens or not is anyone’s guess,”

 

“Thanks,” was all Negan said – watching you take the bucket out. You felt bad from how blunt you'd been, tipping the contents down the bathroom toilet and flushing it, you washed the bucket out briefly with some bleach and came back with a makeshift lid after you raided the attic a little. You put the marigolds exactly where you found them and headed back for the room, putting the bucket back in his cell and feeling his stare raking down your form as you bent down to do so.

 

"Sorry old man, didn't mean to snap," you said again, turning around and walking to the doorway of the cell.

 

It felt a lot more intimate with you inside of it, like you were in his personal space, so instead, you teetered near the designated edge, you closed your eyes and groaned, albeit a little dramatically, you forced yourself to remember the stories.

 

"I don't even know why I feel bad for you, you're an asshole," you said bluntly, making him snort.

 

"A horrible, murdering, cruel, sociopathic, subjugating dictator, if the stories are right," you added "-definitely not someone I should be this nice to,"

 

"Probably not," Negan agreed, but scowled slightly "-but I wasn't just a dictator, we protected people - _I -_ protected people. My Saviors gave people security, so that little lady, is where I'm disagreein' with you," you frowned - and combed your mind for everything you'd found out about the man. You thought you had a fair picture, and crossed your arms under your chest, looking down at him from your standing position.

 

"You made people sacrifice freedom for security, from the sounds of it. You bludgeoned them to death to prove points," you scoffed "Is that what a hero does? Some savior you turned out to be,"

 

He glared at you, you stared impassively back, and slowly shut the cell door, clenching the padlock and making it lock once more, before shoving the lockpick you'd made into your bag.

 

"Y'know I've heard this bullshit before, right?" you sighed, plonking back into the beanbag chair with a soft squish, staring across at him through the bars. "Same bullshit, different mouth. Turns out all you old fucks have more or less the same ideas, just different ways of executing them. You all think that you can rule with an iron fist," you rolled your eyes.

 

"You go back to tribal rules, society collapses, the rules change. We all go back to our roots. I've heard it all before. The place I left, the places I stole from. Very few of them worked differently but I'm sure if I'd have stuck around, I'd have seen the cracks in their armour too.  'Oooooh, I did it to protect them' or 'Ooooh it's for your own good' - or worse, _für das größere Wohl,"_ you switched effortlessly into what Negan recognised as German, you didn't actually know much beyond a few phrases, but you knew all of the ones that were used back at the bayou base by the leader's wife - a pretty German lady, by the name of Evelyn.

 

Für das größere Wohl was a phrase use often.

 

" _For the greater good,"_ you sneered "-blah blah blah, 'needs of the many outweigh needs of the few' - or whatever the _fuck_ you people tell yourself to be able to sleep soundly at night," you felt your hands clench your book and you could tell that Morgan was outside, listening, you had heard his almost silent footsteps, but ploughed on anyway, feeling your chest lighten the more you vented at the man.

 

"But let me tell you somethin' sunshine, I've seen about a million of you, and I've dealt with the worst of you. You ain't shit," you spat "-you're in here because you hurt people, the fact they haven't killed you yet for all you did is frankly, fucking shocking and the only reason I'm still here, which makes me think there's a sliver of a chance that these weirdos are _different,"_

 

"I might be young, but I wasn't born yesterday, so don't sit there and try to sell me a bridge in Brooklyn, got it? I might feel _bad_ for you - because I'm not a fucking monster,  but I know that you _are_ one, so don't try to lessen the actions that led you to be in here, because clearly there's more than enough reason for you to be. I haven't been here very long, but I think that Rick Grimes _might_ be a nice man, and if I'm right, then God, I don't know that I even want to fully understand what drives a nice man to do something like this," you gestured to his cage "-to a person,"

 

"So do me a favour hun, and don't ever try to manipulate me again by trying to soften your actions, or we'll get back to not talking. Got it?"

 

Negan stared at you in mute silence, and instead, just nodded once. Clearly, he wasn't used to being called out, nor was he used to being talked to in such a way for for a moment - he was enthralled. Looking at his arms, he realised with some strange, misplaced sense of amusement, you'd given him goosebumps, something about being told off by you - that fucking _accent -_ that voice, was highly enjoyable, watching that irritation, that _fire,_ sparkle in your eyes, it suddenly made the room seem so much less empty.

 

He'd probably do it again, when he's certain he's not on thin ice, the last thing he wanted to do was lose talking rights with you.

 

Morgan opened the door at that moment, deciding you'd been harsh enough, and made a split second choice that he was certain he wasn't going to regret.

 

He was going to give you a key.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

So, you weren't going to be manipulated, that much, Negan gathered. After that little session, he found himself rather exhausted by talking about himself, you had this manner of spinning everything into a negative, calling him out, needling him for his actions. Even worse, you weren't there, you hadn't personally been wronged by him, so he couldn't say you were speaking from hatred or bias, you just cut through his artful bullshit like a hot knife through butter and it was, frankly, infuriating. All it did was make Negan feel bad. Or close to bad.

 

Maybe that was the goal.

 

"I get it, I'm a horrible bastard, I'm sick of talking about me," said Negan, the next shift you worked on.

 

"We could not talk at all," you said, holding your book up. "-No problem for me."

 

You took his complaining to mean that he didn't want to talk anymore, and much to his dismay, slid your earbuds back in and began to read silently. You were a harsh woman, he thought, a strange military sort of harshness about you which juxtaposed the kindness you'd already shown him that you had. You were an anomaly. Strange. You left him when your shift ended and spent the rest of your time in Alexandria training - when it became apparent you were highly skilled, you noticed you had amassed a small following of people mimicking you.

 

When you saw how horrid some of their stances were, you ended up stopping and correcting them. You didn't mean to, but it seems you had unwittingly ended up leading a class - again, you hadn't meant to, it just sort of happened, naturally.

 

Rick noticed, and smiled at you as he passed. This training was your only real break from Negan and Morgan and all of the other daily grind sort of bullshit, you ended up swallowing your pride and joining one of the teams on a scavanging run - because Tara had asked if you were sick of watching their prisoner yet, and you nodded, ignoring the slight sensation of feeling bad that you weren't there to make sure some of the things you said to Morgan got enacted - like the bucket cleanout rule.

 

"So what part of England are you from?" Tara asked eventually, as you two cleared some wild brush together, hacking at it with large machetes that had been brought in the back of the truck.

 

"Not-London," you elaborated dryly, making her look away with a small smile. "I know most Americans think all of England is just London."

 

"I don't know any other English city, so you're kind of right," Tara admitted, so you listed off a few, hacking at the brush with admirable strength, between the pair of you, you two were like a massive saw, just decimating the greenland in search of wild berries, which, according to Maggie, would grow in a place like this. You beamed at the sight of small blackberries, and began to pick them with enthuse, hearing her laugh at your sudden level ten excitement, which had come without much prompting. When you turned around, she saw your face covered in - well - berry remanents and started to laugh even more, reaching out for your face before she realised what she was doing.

 

You didn't stop her, just standing there letting her wipe your chin and lips dumbly.

 

"Sorry, I didn't really think - you just...have a little.... " she choked on her laughter "- a little on your everything,"

 

You grinned, and revealed bits of it in your teeth.

 

"I'm gonna try some," she said, reaching into her basket and joining you. The laughter seemed to have attracted the attention of the rest of the group, it was Daryl who turned to you two first, seeing your mouths covered in berry juice and looking suitably ridiculous, a small smile etched itself onto his face reluctantly.

 

"Very attractive, ladies," said Daryl, in that deep, smoky voice of his, with humour seeping into it. While they didn't know you much, they did know you were very good at scavenging, and were good for a laugh, once you got past the whole - I don't want to bond with anyone - sort of deal. It seemed that Tara was unwittingly making you do it, for a second, it was like you weren't on the outside looking in. Even if it was just for a moment, you remembered how you talked about moving on, and the smile dropped.

 

"These are really, really good," Tara emphasized with a grin, and with that, the others joined your spot, having found it ripe with fruity riches. You even picked enough to take to Morgan, who wasn't with you - Tara did ask, with none too hidden displeasure, if you were giving any to 'the prisoner' - she'd even taken to calling him that, because though time had passed, nobody was ready to forget all of the things they had suffered under his tyranny.

 

You scoffed.

 

"Nope, but I am going to eat them in front of him," you said, brushing your loose bang back with as much sassiness as you could muster, making her shake her head with a grin. "Well, actually, these are for Morgan. Figured he should have some since he's not here with us,"

 

"That's sweet," said Tara "-I think we should have them made into stew and stored for jam, so when the season passes, we'll have a nice spread,"

 

You couldn't believe you were standing around, shooting the shit about jam - being an Alexandrian was weird, you decided - and you were bonding with them. Whether you liked it or not. There was a woman called Maggie, who seemed to exude her own sense of leadership, and often left because was apparantly the head of another settlement - you thought you liked her. At least, just how she led, but mostly you were indifferent, the only person you seemed to spend much time with was Tara.

 

Rosita still didn't trust you, which was fine, you had your own chip on your shoulder and didn't need hers to boot. Daryl Dixon - Crossbow Guy, which you'd called him to his face until you bothered to remember his name (also briefly cycling through "Mad Max" and "Legolas" - but considering it was a crossbow and not a regular bow, you dropped that one pretty quickly), he seemed pretty nice, despite the grizzly demeanour - like Rick was, but less obvious about it.

 

You found yourself mostly going through books in your spare time, and ended up speaking to the guy with the hideous mullet when you both made for the same book. He was a bit on the heavier side, not much of an athlete or much of a fighter if you took his measure right, his choice of hairstyle was pretty bad, and he seemed to have an awkward, flat monotone.

 

"Ma'am may I have that book please? I feel like I would make more use out of it," he said, as gently as he could, but you read the veiled insult for what it was, whether he meant it that way or not. He was awkward enough seeming that he probably didn't.

 

"Implying I won't? I'm the third book into this series, and I'm intimately familiar with _The Guide to Electrical Engineering,_ and I finished the chemical guide when I was fifteen, so do me a favour," you said with an eyeroll.

 

Eugene looked at you in surprise, before slowly releasing the book and letting you take it, before realising how his words sounded when called out, he looked at you meekly, making you feel a bit bad for snapping. You were doing that a lot lately, weren't you?

 

"My apologies Ma'am I didn't mean to insult your intelligence, I do that a lot, I don't mean to - it just happens," he said sheepishly. It was here that you learned Eugene Porter's story, at least, bits of it, he used to be one of Rick's - but betrayed him, or rather, was captured and forced to Negan's heel, and now Negan had fallen, Eugene was in an awkward No Man's Land, where nobody actually liked him, but nobody could stand to punish him for caving into his cowardice in the face of a man as terrifying as Negan had been at the height of his power.

 

 _These people are a mess,_ you mused.

 

You slapped him on the shoulder with enough force to make him flinch, and tucked the book under your arm.

 

"I'll find you when I'm done with it, later Neck-Curtain,"

 

So, recapping what you bothered to find out (after regretting tuning out some of Rick's speech when you first came in) - they'd gone to war with the Saviors, they'd been turned on by one of their allies, two settlements came as back up and secured Alexandria. There had been an all out war - and the Saviors lost, but so did everyone else. People died - you could still see where there was blood seeped deeply into the grout of the grounds of the Alexandria Safe-Zone, despite how much clean-up had been done.

 

Blood was awful hard to get out of the grout, you knew from experience. You could tell where the bodies would be as you walked down the large road with houses on either side, distracted only when you caught sight of your neighbour. He was a blond fellow, his hair was long and pushed back, and he had big, dark, green eyes and a penchant for mowing his grass without a shirt on.

 

Yeah, there was some positives to staying in Alexandria, you thought, catching his neighbourly grin, you smiled back, slowly raising your hand in a hesitant hello.

 

"I'm Jackson," he said with a grin "-Deadshot right? Cool name,"

 

He had to be in his late twenties, maybe his thirties - you tried to keep your stare above the neck, it's not like you hadn't seen much, much more naked men before, besides, you expected most people to accept your state of dress so you should probably extend the same grace to others.

 

"Nice to meet you Action-Jackson," you said, matching his grin, causing him to raise both brows at the nickname and your...oddness, it wasn't an unpleasant one though. There was something nice and strangely charismatic about it once they got past the whole _I'm-not-bonding-with-anyone_ thing and your crude use of nicknames in an effort to feel less familiar with them, actually made you _more_ familiar, and you hadn't actually noticed it yet.

 

"I suppose I should uh, welcome you to the neighbourhood. If you're staying," he said, leaning on his mechanical hand-push mower, it was an ancient looking thing, but didn't seem to require power, just strength. You shrugged lamely, still feeling like your smile was rather stupid, and dopey.

 

"Consider me welcomed, I think I'm staying, I don't know for sure," you said - before figuring that Action-Jackson wasn't really an inner circle type, you'd never seen him with Rick's people before, he just seemed like a regular Alexandrian, so you leaned forward, looking up into his eyes curiously.

 

"Is Rick Grimes a good leader, you think?"

 

The man didn't even hesitate.

 

"He's the reason we're all still alive, so yeah," he said, glancing out over the neighbourhood where people were milling about doing their business, one of them was Michonne, assumedly heading for the man in question. He could tell why you'd ask - you wanted to know what life was like for the average mook, not the person Rick regarded as somebody he absolutely couldn't lose. He knew that, while they mourned Olivia, she was much more expendable than say, Rosita or Tara, and you wanted to know what life was for the expendable.

 

"He's a bit harsh with us when it comes to training, but only because he wants us to live, not just survive,"

 

He looked you over, and his lips curved into a gentle smile.

 

"For what it's worth, I think you should stay. We could do with a bright new face, we've buried too many this week,"

 

Fuck.

 

You sighed, and waved him off as you turned back for your own house where you'd grab your books and gym bag since you finished training a little after getting back with Tara, and then make a beeline for the kitchens, where a quickly made stew was sizzling. All it took was some sugar, a pinch of salt, some fresh squeezed lemon and voila, a boiled, sinfully delicious, served over-warm berry stew. Hopefully, Morgan would love it - you'd already tried some of your own, and found it delicious.

 

"Morgan! Moooorrrrgaaaaaaan!" you called out, bounding into the house-turned-jail.

 

You were starting to dub it The Jailhouse.

 

* * *

 

 

Well, somehow the sink broke, and when you came in, you found Morgan trying to stop it, covered in water and cringing at the amount of waste. You helped him fix it with a surprising amount of know-how, using him to plug up the leak while you tightened the screws with the bit of wire you had in your bag, which he thankfully, didn't question. It was turning out to be a strange day, Alexandrians seemed to be pulling you into their daily grind left and right, and sans smashing a walker to pieces now and then when you were out on the run, you felt scarily normal.

 

Yeah, normal.

 

Now you were fixing a sink with Morgan - which felt even weirder, before handing him your stew of spoils and taking the shift over. You ate in silence, but you decided you liked yours more when it was cool, so you left it for a while, and sat across from each other as Morgan dripped slightly on the floor.

 

"You're handy," he remarked, making you smile at him weakly.

 

"Yeah, I'm good at fixin' stuff," you responded "-Actually, I'm really, really good with tech so, if you have anything that's broken that you want me to take a look at while I'm here, radios, boilers, pipes," you gestured to the sink "-generators, stereos, - even guns if you trust me enough -  can't make any promises but they have a better chance with me than most,"

 

He looked at curiously, spooning the stew into his mouth with an inscrutable look.

 

"Did your dad teach you all that?" he asked curiously, making you snort derisively, and shake your head a few times. As much as he wanted to pry, Morgan knew better, and could sense you'd probably shut down the more he pushed, which was something the Alexandrians very quickly discovered when trying to question your background too much. You provided them invaluable information about settlements they didn't know about, and told them all about New Richmond and The New Frontier, and who you knew to watch out for, but the second anyone brought up your people in Louisiana, you'd shut down like Fort Knox.

 

"Alright, it's my shift, catch you in the morning," you said, honestly, the quietness of the cell room was probably what you needed to clear your damn head. You didn't _want_ to admit it, but you did have a lot of fun scavenging with Tara, and you hated to admit it, but the consistency of waking up and knowing you had access to food and didn't have to find it as you went along was very, very reassuring.

 

You sank into your beanbag chair, expression betraying deep thought. Negan seemed barely awake, and was watching you dimly through his eyelashes, watching as your chest rose and fell steadily, before picking up a bowl of what looked like stew to him, and silently began eating it.

 

He didn't even feel embarrassed when his stomach rumbled, instead, he didn't give a shit about how his whines sounded. He seemed to have had his dignity chipped away bit by bit, enough to complain.

 

"You're not seriously eating in front of me, are you?"

 

You looked up at him in surprise, before glancing at his empty plate. He got one meal a day, you remembered, and it was the evening, meaning he wouldn't get fed until 12:00 midday tomorrow, which meant he was just sitting there, slowly working up an appetite. You thought after your tirade yesterday that things would be awkward, and to be honest, it kind of was, but no more awkward than usual, it just felt like the elephant in the room that nobody really felt the need to address.

 

Glancing at the door, you got up and slowly clicked it shut, before very hesitantly kicking the beanbag chair over with your foot, not too close, but enough that you could get up and lean out of it then fall back in, if Morgan came in. You got on your knees and sighed, pushing the bowl up to the wide bars and gesturing him over, making the chains clink gently as he closed the gap between you.

 

Okay, you exhaled, now you were close.

 

You put your fingers to your lips in a shushing gesture, from the noise his chains made, and slowly tilted your head so your ear was up and searched for Morgan's footsteps with practice and skill. It took him a moment to figure out what you were listening for, but he kept quiet, both of you hearing the faintest noise of a door shutting - the bathroom door to be precise.

 

"Still in the house," you murmured "-so we should be careful,"

 

Negan nodded, and took the spoon from you - it was a tablespoon, and only the one, but he didn't care. You apologised softly anyway - saying you'd get another, but Morgan was still clearly around and you didn't want to have to explain it. He took some but you noticed he kept the bowl close to the gap under the bars, and you frowned, after about three hungry spoonfuls, he passed it back, making you blink in surprise. Surely his appetite hadn't shrunk that much, right?

 

"I'm not eating all of your dinner," he said. "I ain't _that_ fuckin' rude,"

 

You gave him a look of disbelief, before shaking your head, what was his game here? Was this his way of preserving at least a little bit of his pride? You glanced at the bucket from the corner of your eye - and sighed, well, if that's what it took, you supposed you could allow for it. Everyone should have at least a little.

 

"We can split it," you offered, before pausing "-if you don't mind spoon sharing,"

 

Negan shrugged, there was worse things than spit-swapping - going to bathroom in a bucket for instance. He smirked a little as you took the spoon back and happily chowed down, you seemed to wordlessly agree that three spoonfuls between the pair of you was enough of a fair split before you passed the spoon between you. You both agreed to keep the bowl on the floor, but moved your hand underneath the spoon to stop the stew spilling on the way up. You frowned a bit as a bit got into his beard, which wouldn't exactly show you hadn't snuck him some of your food. You watched him slowly take the spoon out of his mouth after it had passed your lips, and took it from him, dropping it into the bowl harshly.

 

"Oh for goodness sake,"

 

You gestured on your face where it was - and he just kept _missing_ \- forcing you to sigh in exasperation and begin rooting around your gym bag. You had a nice packet of tissues from your run, menthol scented apparently, and good for flu season, but instead of tossing it to him - without really thinking, being that he was so close to the bars, you stuck your hand in with a scowl. Clearly, your hands were working before your mind caught up, grabbing his chin with force and pressing the tissue into his beard, wiping down the offensive stew stain until it was mopped up - before you realised you'd stuck _both_ hands in, you quickly retracted the one holding his face up.

 

That one just wasn't needed, and was just you exerting control trying to hold him in place, so you pulled it back like you'd stuck it in open fire, and dramatically slowing down, eyes widening. Negan could see your mind had caught up with your actions, an amused smile slowly stretching onto his features as he leaned into your touch, like a dog wanting to be petted.

 

"I don't actually bite, I'm not gonna hurt you darlin'," he said softly, letting you dab him clean and very slowly retract your hand back, faint splotches of red making their way onto your dark complexion, everything that just transpired right down to spoon-sharing had been painfully intimate for a reason you couldn't quite pinpoint, and you weren't sure how comfortable you were with it. "Though with how harsh you were yesterday, you'd think I had,"

 

He gave you a curious look, sliding the now empty bowl back to you properly under the cell bars and was pretty blunt, even if some of his charisma had fallen away, much of it was still present, in bones and remnants.

 

"Wanna talk about it?"

 

You shrugged, putting the cutlery away and grabbing your bag, kicking your beanbag back to where it had been. Nobody could or should know you were this close, and in a way, when you'd done it, it felt like you had erased everything that just happened, or it was you trying to, anyway, by resetting the room back to normal.

 

"Nothing to talk about, goodnight," you said curtly, not waiting for him to respond, and simply shutting the door behind you.

 


	3. The Girl Who Cried Quietly

 

“My community was originally a small group of airport survivors that setup in the French Quarter of New Orleans, we traded with a group called Wintersun until they were immersed in a bigger community – which found us. The Louisiana Bayou, they um… they had a military base. It was good for a while. But then it wasn’t good anymore,” you said stiffly.

 

Rick’s voice was like gravel, he cut into your atmosphere with ease, the way he bent his head and looked directly into your eyes, you felt yourself wanting to buckle to his authority. It was probably the uniform, you mused – reminding you of your time as Second Lieutenant in the community back in Louisiana, you had a certain will to want to listen to instruction. You just had the annoying habit of fighting it tooth and nail.

 

“What do you mean, not good anymore?”

 

You shrugged – you did that a lot, and in truth, weren’t the best at communicating your feelings and often left it to your body language, so being forced to was hard.

 

“We didn’t have a proper medical professional so when people would get sick they’d just shoot them in their beds, since it doesn’t matter how you turn. Death is the catalyst for the virus. My mum was with me for a while but she started coughing up blood – it was probably her lung cancer back for round two, but you’d be lucky if you found a band-aid these days, let alone a hospital and I knew it was just a matter of time so…I left the bayou with her, so I could have some time with her and escape but….” You trailed off, irritation oozing into your tone.

 

You really hated telling your story like this, it was something that came from trust, not interrogation, and you hated the way Rick and Tara were looking at you now.

 

“I mean, I’m on my own now so… I think it speaks for itself. We done here Officer Friendly?” you weren’t malicious with it, and he didn’t react to the nickname, he just stuck his hands in his pockets, and responded in kind.

 

“Yeah, I think we are. You're one of us now, if you want to be,”

 

 It really was that simple.

 

"And being 'one of you' - do you know what that means?" you glanced up at him "-I've done some things, Mr Grimes. Horrible things, shit that'd make your hair curl and keep you up at night. You don't know me, you don't even know if I'm a good person," you said, in a flabbergasted tone. "There's things I've done to survive, that even I'm ashamed of, and things I'll keep on doing. Do you really want someone like that in your group?"

 

"We need someone like that," Tara emphasized, looking at you piercingly. "You don't understand how many good people we lost."

 

"And if I'm not good people? Look, you have an idea of what I come from now, even if it's a vague one," you said.

 

"You've been training some of the others," Rick pointed out "-you've already started pulling your weight here, we'd like you to keep on training them, now, we've been doing it too - but clearly you have a style. Like Morgan does, a formal fighting style, and I think it'd be very beneficial for our people to know that,"

 

"Whether you're good or not, I don't know if that matters so much any more, what matters is, will you be good to us?" he said softly.

 

You gave him a long, searching look and slowly nodded.

 

Just like that, you were now a citizen of Alexandria.

 

* * *

 

You really didn’t know what the hell you were doing with Jackson, you really didn’t. The last person you’d loved had been a boy by the name of Creed, and he abandoned you in a manner deemed unforgivable, so you weren’t exactly in a rush. But who said it had to be love? You didn’t need to put a ring on it to admire the fact the man had an aversion to wearing shirts, which you could relate to - especially with this summer.

 

You felt his eyes on you when you jogged the circumference of the town, or when you bent down in your front yard – because you actually had a yard in Alexandria, which was fucking weird enough, and made a bit of a show of the amount of weight you could lift. You set up a pull-up bar in the open garage, and were dragging your body up and down it. Morgan passed you, giving you an approving nod before telling you the pipe broke again, but he temporarily sealed it until you could take a good look. You let go, and sighed, you screwed it using a wire, it hadn’t been tight enough, or maybe a new nail – maybe even a new pipe was in order? Either way you needed tools, not a bit of wire.

 

You smiled mischievously to yourself, and decided to jump down off the bar, and stride up to him, a playful swing in your hips and a hesitant grin. You weren’t the flirtiest creature, but a spot of fun wouldn’t go amiss, you were used to being acted upon – and not doing the acting, so this just seemed a bit harmless, if you were a bit honest.

 

“Hey Action-Jackson,” you said, a playful look in your face. “-Got any tools in that shed of yours I can borrow? Pipe keeps breaking in the Jailhouse,”

 

“I can look at that if you want, I’ll come round later,” he said insistently, making you roll your eyes.

 

“It’s fine, I can fix it, it’s no sweat – I’ll give the tools right back I swear. Probably just need a wrench to tighten it up, and a screwdriver,” you said, trying to recall the state of the pipe when you quickly did a bosh-job of fixing it just enough so that it'd stop raining holy hell down on the front of Morgan's clothes.

 

Jackson gave you a million-dollar smile and for a second, your heart jumped in your throat and you couldn’t stop giving him a stupid smile in return.

 

“Aw, let me do it, you can put your feet up, you have enough to do,” he said with his sparkling smile, and just like that, you gave a deep heaving sigh, in fake exasperation.

 

“Men,” before grinning again and flouncing off.

 

Oh yeah, today was going to be a good day.

 

You were insufferably chipper when you went to go and check in on Negan, humming happily that Morgan had also seen it fit to give you a key - the fact you could be cheerful cleaning out a shitbucket was frankly both odd and concerning, and Negan wondered what put you in a good mood. It wasn't like he had much else to wonder about when he was stuck in that tiny cell all day and all night, he picked up things here and there when you spoke, even a bit from Morgan, about the state of the communities and things on the outside, but as a deposed leader, he was starting realise that it mattered less and less to him and that in truth, he shouldn't be seeking out that knowledge at all.

 

In reality, he was probably supposed to focus on his life, and wonder how much of it was left - he'd hurt a lot of people, as you never ceased to stop reminding him.

 

"What's got you all cheerful?" he asked finally between sips of fresh water, unable to put up with your dopey grin without knowing the cause, and the fact you hadn't turned the page in your book for a solid hour and were therefore lost in your stupid, happy thoughts.

 

Today you felt halfway human, so yeah, you were lost in your thoughts, staring at the same page for a while.

 

"Action-Jackson - uh, he's the guy nextdoor, yeah, uh, my neighbour likes to mow the lawn without a shirt on and it's pretty great," you said, sighing happily, making him choke violently on said water, he actually turned a strange colour because it went down the wrong way, before the redness faded out of his face and he regained control of himself, giving you a strange look, raising a single eyebrow at you with a trace of a grin, though his voice was rather monotone.

 

"That was....not the answer I was expecting," he deadpanned.

 

You turned to him and shrugged, slapping a hand over your chest and giving him a rather put-out sort of look.

 

"I am just a woman of flesh and bone, and if my very fit neighbour likes to mow his lawn without a shirt on, I will accept it as a bounty from the gracious Lord and not complain," making him snort at you, the smile reluctantly breaking out onto his features.

 

"If you want a guy to take off his shirt I'm pretty sure I can oblige that, and probably most the people here. It's about hot enough," he said flatly, this was definitely not where he expected today's conversation to go, but it was better than the wall to wall roasting he got from you, from time to time, and frankly, he was ready to dish a little back. "Lady pervs get away with more,"

 

You scoffed.

 

"Fuck off, I'm not a lady perv, not if he's just...putting it out there, anyway, I _know_ you stare at my arse, so, stuff you for calling _me_ a pervert. Pot, meet kettle - by the by, you're black," you huffed, feeling like he was trying to make a little dig at you, only for him to grin.

 

He decided he rather liked lighthearted conversation, it had been a while.

 

"I shall neither confirm nor deny those allegations - however, it is a  _very_ nice ass," said Negan "-and y'know, if you got it," gesturing with one hand at your body and your choice of...yeah, he was pretty sure that was just a sport's bra and not actually something that qualified as a shirt "-flaunt it, I suppose. _Definitely_ no complaints on this end, darlin'," he said with a greasy sort of grin, making you flush and fold your arms over your chest in a pose he was starting to call your 'stubborn mule' pose in the back of his mind.

 

"Dirty old man," you grumbled, but lacking much in the way of real malice.

 

"Enough of the old man," he groaned "-I'm only fucking forty," in truth it had been bothering him for a while that you called him that, and comparitively speaking he saw why, but it still got on his nerves, but being that he was a prisoner and lucky to even be alive, it was something he reserved complaining about until just then.

 

"Yeah, that's twice my age, ergo - you're an old man, suck it up," you said smugly, watching his eye almost twitch with an annoyed tick.

 

He glared at you - and decided to turn his back to you in a decidedly petulant manner, that made you actually, genuinely laugh. Oh yeah - today was going to be a fantastic fucking day, you could just feel it. True to promise, it actually was! Tara had saught you out and offered to help you move in properly, which you thought was amazingly sweet of her, you collected your ration packet and signed it out, feeling better that someone who actually knew the system was doing it for you, the last thing you wanted to do was accidentally steal.

 

She helped you put some new sheets on your bed, was very understanding about pointing to where all the women-specific supplies were kept, and even helped you sort through some of the clothes you'd scavenged between ones that fit and ones that didn't.

 

You made it easier by mostly only wearing trousers, because - you said, unless you were walking through hoards, where you needed to cover it guts, it was easier to walk like this in summer, and in truth, with the combats especially, she couldn't help but think you evoked an image of a feminine Abraham, though, you even packed more muscle than he did - because you were built to be this way. From the age of fourteen onwards, you had been built, "apocalypse-ready," right on the tin, and clearly, it showed.

 

"I'm sorry about Rosita - she's...she's been mourning longer than all of us," Tara said, and you just shrugged. Every single person in Alexandria wasn't obligated to like you and you said as much, besides, you rationalised, you thought you already met some of the nicest.

 

You gave her a smile as you said it, and watched her blush slightly.

 

"So, you and the neighbour, that Jackson guy," she said, with a twinkle in her eye, making you groan - did everyone hear about that?

 

"Oh come on, everyone knows everything about everyone, Alexandria is a tight-knit community and you don't exactly hide the fact you watch him in the morning with your cup of coffee, sitting on the porch outside," she smirked, making you turn your nose up in an exaggerated fashion.

 

"I guess you're definitely staying then," she grinned, making you sigh loudly.

 

"I suppose between cute guys mowing the lawn without their shirt on, and very cute girls helping me unpack, you've twisted my arm," you rolled your eyes. "I'm sticking around."

 

Tara beamed, and you weren't quite sure what you did to deserve that kind of a smile directed at you, but it made you feel warm, so you accepted it, giving her a quick side-hug as a thank you for helping you settle into your home a little more and actually make you feel like part of Alexandria. Some of Rick's people were a lot less warm, like Carol, and Rosita for a start - so it was nice that you at least had Tara, who was proving to be a very sweet kind of woman. So far you could say you probably trusted Tara, and probably maybe Morgan, but you were very slow to rush into it all, and they could see the caution in your face, it's why you were very selective over which runs you went out with, you fairly obviously didn't trust strangers to cover you, either.

 

You had awkwardly had a conversation with Carl, but it was mostly you asking him to help you keep count of how many push-ups you could do, and by the time Rick walk past, he stopped in his tracks, seeing his gangly son sitting on your back, holding onto the back of your muscular shoulders and counting out loud.

 

It took him a few moments to realise what he was looking at - before he slowly shook his head to himself, a small smile gracing his features. You were going to fit in here in Alexandria, even though you were strange, there was an undeniable sort of charm about you, a pull that he couldn't quite describe, Carl probably saw it too. It didn't take too much convincing, to get the near-stranger to sit on your back, you just said there was no safe weight you could put on your back short of bricks which occasionally fell off, and asked him to grip your shoulders.

 

He'd been very, very uncertain until you accused him of being shy, and needled him in just the right way that he actually sat on your back out of pure annoyance, hoping to keep you pinned to the floor to prove a point, only to feel you raise the both of you up almost effortlessly and him almost slide off. He let out a surprised noise and dug his fingers into your shoulders, barely missing the deep puncture you had, but now having an up close and personal view of some of the scarring around your sports bra straps that he could see from the back.

 

_Christ._

 

He remembered he was supposed to be counting, and made an effort to quickly tally up the ones he missed, blinking in surprise with his good eye as you moved one hand behind your back onto his knee and began doing it with one arm on eithe side.

 

"You're pretty strong - twenty eight, twenty nine---" he said, not realising Rick was watching them with some strange sense of amusement.

 

"You need to put on some weight," you sighed, finally collapsing in a puddle of sweat at thirty and having the gangly teen dismount your back, only for him to look awkwardly up at his father - as though finally realising he was there.

 

"Hi dad," he said lamely, scratching the back of his neck, feeling more than a little awkward being caught sitting on the new girl's back - even if it had been beyond innocent, it was a sign that you were integrating whether you admitted it to yourself or not.

 

"I was looking for you two, there's another community meeting,"

 

Downside to being an Alexandrian, the fucking community meetings - you sighed, wiping the sweat from your brow with the back of your hand and nodding, following alongside the man you had since dubbed Officer Friendly, and Carl simply as Patches, though you switched between that and Big Blue, he didn't seem to question it much, or seem offended, and being that nobody stopped you yet, you carried on with it. In truth, the community meeting didn't mean much to you, it was them talking about Hilltop and the Kingdom and the Compound regrouping and re-establishing trade routes and making a healthy relationship now the remaining Saviors had been dealt with.

 

You didn't really know what had gone down, you just had some pretty strong ideas about it, so much of it you tuned out admittedly - except when they got to the part about trusting you with a gun, finally - and handed you a small handgun.

 

Rosita looked at you in what you could only call a resting bitch face, so you simply matched it with a small smile, and turned away from her. It wasn't your job to unlodge the rod that was firmly up her ass, besides, Tara said she was mourning longer than everybody else, best to let people do their own thing when they're going through that shit, right?

 

Two things had transpired since you had joined and started doing things in Alexandria - Morgan had given you a key to the holding cell, and you had now been given a gun.

 

Oh, yes. You were definitely a citizen now.

 

"We don't go back to the junkyard though, they've proved they can't be trusted," said Rick flatly, making you almost doubletake.

 

"You guys allied with the _fucking_ junkrats?!" your voice broke through the community meeting like a hot knife and you felt many sets of eyes on you, only for you to suddenly feel awkward under the many, many stares, forcing you to clear your throat and be ready to mumble an apology, but it was Rick who followed you up on it.

 

"You know them?" he pressed - and considering you'd forced the entire spotlight on yourself, you couldn't just awkwardly answer it with a shrug, as you were so sorely tempted to - since your outburst had been rather loud - and you could feel Daryl gently nudge you with his shoulder, reminding you to reply because you had fallen silent under all of the looks.

 

"Oh yeah," you shuddered, folding your arms over your chest, they were benign compared to what you left behind, and The New Frontier was definitely worse than the garbage people, but you had gotten into your fair amount of shit on the rare occasion you dealt with survivors sans the man - Gerald - at the pharmacy, the rest had all been distinctly unpleasant for their own reasons. "Am I fucking familiar with them? Unfortunately, and if I see that Jadis bitch, I'm going to stab her in the neck," you all but hissed, a flash of violence in your eyes.

 

Rick blinked - this was unexpected, and he wanted to say nobody was stabbing anyone, but he couldn't say he was very fond of Jadis either, after she turned on him and it nearly led to Michonne dying, among all the people they lost in general.

 

"I passed out of New Richmond avoiding The New Frontier people I told you about, narrowly avoided the highwaymen I told you about too - didn't count on the junkyard being inhabited, I remember walking down, ready to set up camp not too far away, and then someone put a fucking bin bag over my head and threw me into the back of a BMW, next thing I know, I wake up covered in bruises and all my shit is gone. Why the fuck do you think I barely had anything when you found me? I'm strong, but I'm not strong enough to take on a whole group. So yeah, in short, fuck the junkrats," you hissed.

 

"Well.... we aren't exactly their friends right now, they turned on us during the fight with the Saviors, so, if any of them come on territory, instructions are to shoot on sight and the settlements have all agreed not to trade with them, but it won't stop them stealing," Rick pointed out.

 

"Good, starve that bitch out," you bit out, feeling your good mood start to fade, you were definitely still salty about it, which barely scratched the surface. You weren't scared of very small, enclosed spaces, but it didn't mean that you liked it at all, and being in the boot of that BMW had been horrible, evoking all kinds of memories that you didn't want to think about.

 

"So that's why you were so scared," said Michonne, giving you a sideways glance, making you sigh deeply.

 

"I probably would have been either way, I can count the amount of nice survivors I've met on one hand, so uh, yeah, no offence or anything,"

 

"None taken," she said, and just like that, the meeting resumed as though you hadn't interrupted it at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In typical fashion, you were going to try to contain the leak in the Jailhouse, because, you noted, it was started to seep out of the kitchen and if they weren't already on the downstairs floor, it probably would have worn through it - all of that water. Oh yeah, the sealing that Morgan did must have come loose, so you were rather desperately waiting on Action-Jackson. For the first time in a long time, you did, actually, feel safe in Alexandria - and felt like you'd been given the keys to the city. In reality, it was just a cell key and a tiny handgun, but to you, they were a symbol of hard-earned trust, and while you had some ways to go yet, they seemed to respect you and your ability to survive, and respect was a good step.

 

You left the handgun in your home because you didn't see much point to carrying it when you already had a knife and a sledgehammer, the latter of which you'd taken to finally only wearing on runs, and behind the walls, you actually felt safe, so the kirpan was the only thing you seemed to carry.

 

When you heard a few loud knocks, you went over to the door, grinning and being met with a pair of lovely, dark green eyes, proudly holding the toolbox.

 

"I have the lady's tools, but I'm a bit short on time, I think Rick wants me on a run because it's been a while since I've done it," he said, explaining that he didn't actually have that long, so you reached out to take the box, only for him to scowl, and put one foot in the door, getting into your space and making your breath catch in your throat for a moment.

 

"C'mon, let me fix your pipe," he smirked, making your ears burn and let him in, distinctly uncomfortable with his forwardness. There was banter and then there was almost pushing your hips against someone and doing it, plus, the fun part about Action-Jackson was the fact it was mostly innocent, with you doing the advancing.

 

You frowned, but did your best not to think too much on it, watching him bend over the sink and start fiddling with things, asking you to pass various tools, it almost seemed normal, before he opened the cabinets under the sink and said that you were smaller and that he didn't have a flashlight on hand, and to try to go inside and survey the state of the pipes to make sure nothing was about to come loose down there. You did so - only to find yourself coughing on cobwebs, and letting out a muffled noise.

 

"Looks okay down here--" you rose up out of the space, only to find Jackson - very.... _very, very_ close. You would have backed out of his space, only your back was pushed against the sink, and you physically couldn't get anymore further back.

 

"Okay Action-Jackson, resident sink fixing hero, it's all done," you laughed uncomfortably, only to feel his hands settle on your bare shoulders, and him giving you that million watt grin, only for it to make your stomach lurch uncomfortably.

 

"Erm...." you trailed off "-you... could you back off a second?"

 

You grimaced as he dropped a rather corny line about heroes getting a reward, and in any other context, you'd have laughed, and you tried, but it came out higher pitch than normal - all of your alarm bells were ringing. At first you thought you were oversensative to it, because of everything that happened to you in the bayou, and since. But now you were pretty sure your sense of danger was acute, and correct, and began chewing on your lip nervously, shrieking in surprise as he pushed his face against your shoulder, his teeth taking in some of the material of your sports bra and tugging it down your arm.

 

_I thought I was safe here._

 

_Rick said I was safe here._

 

"-W-What the fuck are you doing!? Stop!" you snapped, ready to push him off all of your tremendous strength, feeling your vision start to blur around the edges in a distinctive automatic response.

 

_I thought I was out of the bayou._

 

"Oh come on, don't give me that, you've been looking at me long enough," he chuckled into your left breast, and you felt yourself glaze over - you don't even remember doing it - you remember screaming at him and feeling infuriated when he laughed at you, and more so when you felt his lips on your chest in a way reserved only for actual lovers, and the sound of your combat fly unzipping. You grabbed a rubber handle of something jutting out of the sink - which Morgan must have used earlier and been too lazy to wash, and God, were you thankful for his laziness, as you brought the thing down with a resounding, ungodly, ringing _smack!_

 

_We don't hurt little girls in Alexandria._

 

And down he went, you'd swung a saucepan with all of the strength your body could physically muster, whacking it at Jackson's head before he even realised you'd grabbed it deftly.

 

**_I THOUGHT I WAS SAFE HERE._ **

 

His entire body slumped down on top of your tiny one, before slowly swaying to one side, and then collapsing with a loud, resounding thud - then banging again off the side of the kitchen table. You stared at the man by your feet, before hesitantly poking his cheek with the end of your mountain boot. You felt your racing heart suddenly start to pain in your chest, and your hand flew up to your lips to muffle the scream that followed as you noticed a distinct bit of blood on the table that he'd banged his head off, and more pooling onto the kitchen tile.

 

Oh God. You were going to be sick.

 

It's not the first living person you've killed, but it's been about four years since you'd done it, the rest had been walkers - in a panic, you screamed for Morgan - and quickly tore through the house, dropping the saucepan near the man's head with a loud clatter, tearing through all of the bedrooms, the bathroom and then racing to the room where the cell was. Finding him nowhere, you panicked, slamming the door shut and panting heavily, before throwing your back against it and sliding down it in abject panic.

 

_Oh nonononononononononono. Rick and his people have only JUST accepted me. This can't be happening. This isn't happening. Oh God, what if he's dead?_

 

You panted heavily, hand over your mouth, muffling your own panicked noises, eyes frozen and wide - it took a moment to realise that Negan was awake, and staring at you - having crawled as far up to you as his chains would allow, his hands curled around the metal bars of the cell, calling out to you.

 

"I did a bad thing," you cried out, not really hearing him.

 

He must have been doing it a while, but eventually, you snapped out of it, and he looked at your frazzled state, and heard a few things faintly from downstairs - he caught sight of the strap halfway down your arm, and the flash of your underwear from a half-pulled down zipper, and saw the tears streaking down your face, and put two and two together, but asked anyway.

 

"What happened?" in a very low, very serious voice, lacking all of the candor of earlier.

 

_...I...._

 

"Jackson," you breathed "-he came over and then he...he came to fix the sink and I said I didn't need him to butheforcedhiswayinandthenhetrickedmeintogoing under the sink and when I got up he shovedmeagainstit andhestartedtouching me," you exhaled quickly.

 

_...thought I was...._

 

"I screamed at him no and he wouldn't and I didn't - I didn't know what to d-- _I couldn't - not again_ \- so I just..grabbed... the saucepan and hit him _so fucking hard_ and he fell over and there's blood all over the floor and the table and oh my God what if he's dead? What if I fucking killed him and he's going to turn? What if he's haemorraghing up there? How the fuck do I explain this to Rick? Oh God, Oh God---"

 

_...safe..._

 

Okay, you were panicking now, understandably, and Negan was sure he'd understood most of what you said, so he hushed you gently with his deep, soothing baritone, only to see you turn around, and promptly vomit behind his cell.

 

He grimaced, but felt a little bad, watching you hunch over, tears streaming down your face, just lurching over and wretching your guts out because some asshole tried it on with you. He looked at you seriously and tried to reach for you from his cell, but couldn't quite, his hand instead gently touching the top of your head, surprisingly, you didn't recoil, you just leaned into it when you finished throwing up. Luckily it was close enough to the bars that he could probably lie and say he did it, if Morgan came down before you cleaned it up.

 

"Listen to me, I need you to hear me, okay sweetheart?"

 

Sweetheart, that was a new one.

 

You sniffled and looked at him, wiping your lips on the back of your hand - for the life of you, you didn't even understand your own reaction, it wasn't as if you hadn't had your bodily integrity shat all over ad infinitum, so why did it hurt so much now? Was it because you finally let your guard down, even slightly? Or was it because you actually thought you kind of liked Jackson? Maybe it was both, either way you felt stupid, like a stupid little girl who made stupid fucking choices and it led to this goddamn mess and it was **_all your fucking fault._**

 

"I want you to go upstairs, go out that front door, and grab the first person you see. Don't change yourself, don't move the body, don't do anything differently. If nobody is around, I want you to go outside, and scream for help at the top of your lungs, and then you will tell whoever comes exactly what you told me, okay? And no matter what, you don't tell anyone you came to see me in the interim, just trust me on that one, okay?"

 

You needed to know what to do, you needed some kind of direction in your panic, and Negan's soothing baritone felt like as good instruction as any, so you nodded, sniffling heavily, before backing away from the cell. Your body went on autopilot as you ascended up the steps, ignoring the kitchen where Jackson's prone form lay.

 

You walked outside, and didn't see anybody around immediately, most were in their houses, so you tore up - and did exactly what Negan said.

 

" _S-someone h-help me, please. PLEASE! I NEED HELP!"  
_

 

 


	4. Lost Bird in a Clear Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like it, please leave a comment, it means a lot!

 

You remember her arms around your naked elbows, her taller body looking down at you. It was a person you didn’t know who came up to you first, who immediately screamed for Rick, but it was both he and Michonne who came to you as a pair. They stood and took your appearance in as a kindly looking woman – whose name you learned was Michelle – all but tugged them over.

 

“Screaming at the top of her lungs – the poor thing, kept saying ‘Jackson’ over and over,”

 

It was Michonne whose hands had found your naked elbows, she wasn’t a massively warm person, but she wasn’t an entirely cold one either. Her eyes flickered to the sagged strap on your left shoulder, and then down at your zipper, her fingers gently finding their way up your bicep and pulling it back over your shoulder. It felt like with the intensity of her stare that she already had an inkling of what was about to come out of your mouth.

 

“I hit Jackson,” you blurted out, feeling the warm sensation dripping from your nose into your upper lip – instinct told you to wipe it, but you could hear Negan’s voice in your head – telling you not to change anything, and to tell them everything that you’d told him.

 

It was Rick’s soothing voice that brought you out of your panic, your stomach wringing itself over and over in fear that they were going to cast you out the second that they accepted you into their fold. You looked at him through your eyelashes, his figure blurring under your watery stare, you still felt the sense of personal outrage and indignance, embroiled with a sense of self-blame, and shame.

 

“Why did you hit Jackson?” said Rick – it seemed he took in the same signals Michonne had, and had softened his voice considerably. “-You’re not in trouble, I need to know what happened before anyone is in any kind of trouble. Alright? Talk to me,”

 

You let out a shaky breath and started wringing your hands out of genuine nervousness, because you really hoped these were good people, you really, desperately needed to have good people – or even just one. One good person to believe in, after all you’d been through – you could take just one.

 

“He came to fix a pipe in the Jailhouse,” you managed, swallowing thickly.

 

_‘Come on, Second Lieutenant Deadshot, what would Sergei say if he could see you snivelling right now? Get it together girl.’_

 

You looked down at yourself, feeling that sense of shame creeping up on you – you flirted with him enough, you stared at him when he did his yard work, and you sat on your porch with your coffee ration just blatantly admiring him. For fuck’s sake, you made a show of bending over to pick your makeshift weights up just so he’d stare at your backside. It wasn’t like you hadn’t led him on a bit, even if it was just in jest and fun.

 

 _“…I shouldn’t have,”_ you muttered to yourself meekly, before clearing your throat and raising your voice a bit. “I mean, I put out bad signals I guess, and he said he’d fix the sink and tricked me into going underneath it to check the pipes. When I got up, he was right in my space and I couldn’t move and I didn’t _think_ – and he started _touching me_ and I asked him to get off and he _laughed_ at me and I didn’t think I just grabbed the handle of the pan in the sink and I hit him really hardandthere’sbloodeverywhereanditwasanaccidentandIdunnoifhe’sdeadandI’msorry!” you rambled out, before sniffing up the next glob of snot ready to pour out of your nose and feeling distinctly undignified. You heard someone nearby – an Alexandrian who perhaps didn’t trust you so much, or maybe liked Jackson, say that they didn’t actually know you – so how could they trust you?

 

You glanced down at your hip at the forgotten kirpan and gave a loud sniff.

 

“Don’t you think if I wanted to kill him on purpose for whatever reason I’d have just stabbed him?” you croaked “I panicked, I wasn’t thinking, I just wanted him off me so I grabbed the closest thing,”

 

Well, the only thing for it was to see Jackson’s body for himself, so Rick headed into the Jailhouse with you and Michonne trailing behind him – he was still on the floor with his blood puddle. Rick’s finger trailed into the bit on the edge of the table, with a slight frown. He was a police officer – so he didn’t really need a crime scene explained to him, but he had you confirm it.

 

“He hit his head on the way down,” you said quietly, making him nod. It checked out – he picked up the saucepan and grimaced – there wasn’t any sign on it, no dent, no blood, but it looked hard enough to cause a man to fall like a ton of bricks, especially with your level of strength. He murmured something to Michonne, but when he turned to you – he saw you sniffling, hoisting your combats up and zipping them like a child that had gotten pantsed in a corridor at school and he felt something inside of him ache slightly.

 

It was when Rick moved to the room with the cage that you finally understood the tail end of Negan’s instructions.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Negan was sat casually in his cell, back to the wall, one leg out, the other knee raised up and his jacket folded neatly in a corner, now doubling as a pillow. He looked worse for wear, but seemed to be holding up, though now his white shirt was off-white, and clinging to every crevice his body had. Rick couldn’t say he felt much in the way of sympathy, but he needed answers, so he stood before the cage with his arms folded, before the smell of vomit got under his nose.

 

Ugh.

 

He couldn’t say the feeling was sympathy, but it was a misplaced sensation of guilt, because he knew he was at least a better man than Negan, and that he’d probably been sick – and was pretty much forced to sit in his own filth for weeks on end, but when Negan smirked, Rick felt that feeling wash away as quickly as it had come.

 

“To what do I owe the fuckin’ pleasure?” he said, his usual cocksure tone sounded dry and hoarse, and with the state of his beard, he was looking less and less like a leader, and more like a deposed lunatic.

 

“Did you hear anything?” said Rick flatly “-there was an…incident, in one of the other rooms, bein’ you’re the only one here, I’m asking you – _did, you, hear, anything?”_ there was a distinct lack of patience in his tone and a lesser man might have recoiled at the near tangible disgust, but Negan didn’t react.

 

Negan scoffed, before glancing at you – seeing your face staring at your boots like a told off child, and Michonne hawking over you, like a vulture waiting in judgement, and then Rick’s impatient face – then sighed.

 

“That bitch,” he said, gesturing to you “-screamed. Pretty fuckin’ loud too. I was asleep,” he said, tangible irritation in his tone. You resisted the urge to react as he spoke, keeping your head down but your mind spinning – what the Hell was he doing…?

 

“I heard some Rapey McGee asshole say somethin’ about fixin’ her pipe and some other shit but I couldn’t really make it out, then a chick scream – guessin’ her - then a loud thud. Shit pretty much speaks for itself, don’tcha think? Sounded pretty obviously like he was forcin’ himself on her, from the shit I could pick up. Then she screamed, like, a fuckin’ lot. Lookin’ for Morgan,” He deadpanned, as though he was more irritated by your noise than the horrible thing that had transpired.

 

_But he didn’t hear all of it, just some of it, he’s….embellishing slightly, but none of its wrong – but why…?_

“Did she fuckin’ lamp the dude or something?” he asked curiously, giving Rick a look before turning to you, and when Rick didn’t react, he grinned and made a show of assuming he was correct.

 

“Shit, man. I guess big stuff does come in small packages,” he jibed.

 

Michonne wondered, out loud briefly if Negan had any reason to protect you, but he scoffed, and then sneered.

 

“About the only good thing she does for me is be easy on the eye, she fuckin’ ignores me or spends the hours givin’ me a fucking doctoral thesis on why I’m a bad fuckin’ person, so frankly, she’s not my favourite, but – y’know. I like rapists a whole lot less,” he said bluntly, before turning to you. Nobody expected you to say anything after all this, you just seemed to be slumped over, standing with your shoulders up to your ears and head down, hands in your combat pockets and looking a mixture of both sad and uncomfortable.

 

So when you did speak again, Rick bristled with surprise, and your voice was quiet – and damning.

 

“ _You told me I was safe here_ ,” you croaked out, accusation oozing into your tone. “ _You said I should stay ‘cos it’s safe here, but you’re all the same,”_

 

You walked past him and slumped in your beanbag chair, drawing your knees up to your chest and refusing to look at either of them.

 

“Maybe you’re worse, actually. ‘Cos you make out like your good people when you’re not,” you hissed.

 

“We are,” said Rick firmly “-this was… this shouldn’t have happened. This doesn’t happen. This is not who we are – or what Alexandria is.”

 

You buried your head into your knees.

 

“I don’t think I believe anything you say anymore. So just let me do my job for tonight, and I’m going to consider leaving in the morning,” you hated how petulant you sounded, but the ultimatum was serious nonetheless.

 

“Please don’t,” said Rick quietly “-give me an opportunity to fix this, and deal with Jackson. Sleep on it, but don’t just leave,”

 

You said nothing, mind mulling over what you had to say before deciding to go with the feeling of resentment and disappointment that the assault from Jackson had left you with, refusing to lift your head up from your knees.

 

“Y’know, where I come from?” you said throatily, bringing the room to silence.

 

“Back in the Louisiana bayou?” you swallowed thickly. “They’re at least honest when they treat women like chattel, and you can expect shit like this, because that’s just how things are done. But you made me expect better from here. And for a second? Stupid idiot me. I believed it. Because I wanted to. Really bad!” you cried out, sounding more and more like a child.

 

You couldn’t see Rick’s face – but Negan could, and it was visibly wincing.

 

“I’m….sorry – that this happened –“

 

“Just get out!” you snapped, finally pulling your head up and showing that the whites of your eyes had gone completely red from how upset you’d gotten. “Sorry doesn’t fix shit! It never has, it probably never will! You think the biggest threat is in that cage? Apparently, you don’t know your people that well at all, how can stay here if I can’t trust anyone?”

 

You were absolutely scathing and for once, Rick Grimes didn’t have an answer.

 

“You trust Tara, don’t you?” he said gently.

 

“Tara is nice to me,” you said throatily “-so I’m nice back. There’s a difference. Just… just leave me alone. Let me finish out my day like normal until Morgan gets back,”

 

“You don’t have to do that,” said Michonne softly.

 

“I know, but I’m not ready to go outside this Jailhouse again right now and have everyone looking at me, I’d rather just finish out and creep back home while it’s dark, if it’s all the same to you,”

 

Taking one look at your vulnerable stare, she understood. She had some reservations leaving you with Negan, but when it became apparent that he didn't like you much, and that Morgan seemed to heavily trust your approach - enough that she found out you had a key to the man's cell, she found it hard to argue. Even if she didn't fully trust you, she trusted Morgan, because she trusted Rick - and Rick trusted Morgan with his life. So with some reluctance, they left, not that you paid much mind - all you heard was the door click shut when they went. Nobody said anything, not you - not Negan, and for a while, that was fine.

 

Until you heard the noise.

 

It took maybe ten or fifteen minutes since they left, they were still in the house - you couldn't tell for sure how long it'd had been, but you heard a loud, echoing, resounding bang that unmistakably the sound of a single gunshot, and you froze, not reacting.

 

And then the defeaning silence fell again, until Negan's voice gently broke it.

 

"I covered your story, so I'm gonna ask that you pay it forward, and ask that you don't fuckin' leave," he said softly, making you raise your head up and look at him. You wiped at your face and frowned, feeling the headache coming over you slowly. The gunshot still rang in your ears - neither of you needed to comment on it, it was fairly obvious that if Jackson hadn't been killed by the blow to the head you'd given him, then when Rick went into the other room, he was most definitely taken care of, without so much as fanfare.

 

"What...?" you said, voice crackling as you sniffled.

 

"If you fuckin' leave," said Negan quietly "-then it's just me and that fuckin' asshole, Morgan. And I don't know if you know this, but you're the only person here who still treats me like a human being, and yeah, I ain't a retard, I know this shit was a long time comin' and it could stand to be a whole lot worse. If it was the other way round it probably would be, but fuck, don't leave. Even when you don't say a fuckin' word to me it's still better than the alternative," he confessed.

 

You stared at him in bewilderment, honestly, you didn't even think your presence had much effect on him, especially considering how often you weighed up the times you ignored him with the times you spoke to him.

 

"As someone who just did you a fuckin' favour," he said - and yes, it was just a slight bit manipulative, but Negan had nothing he could offer you to make you stay, so all he had was this, and he was pleading while maintaining as much of what was left of his pride as possible. "I'm askin' you,"

 

"There ain't a lot of things that make sittin' in your own fuckin' filth, fuckin' bareable,"

 

You gave him a look, and spoke in hoarse sarcasm, somehow gathering enough of your wits to do so.

 

"And I suppose being easy on the eye does that for you?"

 

Negan just smirked slightly, despite the situation, and ploughed on.

 

"Yeah, but the company is good too. You might be the only person I haven't personally fucking wronged in some way, but you still call me out on my shit. It used to piss me off, but I kinda dig it now, it's different from Morgan. It's...logical, and cold. Don't get me wrong, I wish you could be just a little fuckin' nicer," he added "-but in this fuckin' cage?" he rattled his chains a little for effect and gently thumped one of the bars, making it ring with a metallic noise.

 

"You're actually the best part of my day."

 

 You felt a strange heat rising in your face, but you scoffed, trying to slide into the sensation of being normal and bantering with the man again just so you'd feel comfortable in your own skin again, trying to shake the noise of the gunshot out of your ears.

 

"Fucking hell, you must be getting Stockholm Syndrome then," you teased "-I'm your jailor, not your friend,"

 

"You might be right," said Negan "-about the Stockholm thing, but y'know, you can't really blame me, it's not like you aren't very pretty," he watched as you flushed an even darker shade and finally felt in his element, slowly rising up out of his chains and making his way to your side as much as he could, until he was once again pressed against the bars which were closest to your beanbag chair, which, he noticed, was just a little closer than usual.

 

"Because you are, you're really fuckin' pretty," he exhaled slowly, giving you a small, wolfish grin.  "You are a _hot_ young woman, and you can do a _lot_ better than that rapey bozo Jackson,"

 

"You never even saw Jackson," you scoffed, unsure of how to handle his compliments besides blush and not actually look at the older man's face.

 

"Don't need to. I know you can do better," he said insistently "-and, y'know, if there's a new vacancy available for your shirtless men ogling hobby now he's dead, I'm sure there's no shortage of lucky bastards who wouldn't mind filling that role," he added, before slowly raising his hand to demonstrate himself as one of them, complete with an exaggerated wink, showing that when he wasn't moping or complaining, he actually still had a sillier side that was still present. It often tangled itself with his more sociopathic side, but this time? It was just pure, and for a moment, you didn't know how to react.

 

You stared at him, and finally figured out what he was trying to do - this was his way of trying to cheer you up. Make you laugh, even - by bantering with you, and to his credit, it kind of worked, because you could feel a reluctant smile pushing itself onto your face.

 

"If not, then I, the great and noble Negan, bravely offer myself for the cause," he put his other hand to his chest as though he'd sworn to oath and you found yourself letting out a tiny laugh despite yourself. It was so stupid, and not what you expected from him at all, but it seemed that one of Negan's qualities was that he was rather unpredictable.

 

"...but only if you stay."

 

 

* * *

 

 

You spent the next day avoiding Tara like the plague, and most of everyone to be honest. You didn't sleep well either, how could you, possibly? You tossed and you turned and you stared up at the ceiling with a blank look. Picking up your new book - you tried to read it, but even the safe monotony of machine work didn't put you to bed. Rising up, you decided to look through some of the things that had come with the home, because it belonged to someone once, well, more than one person. It belonged to someone before the collapse - a family from the size of it. Walking through the rooms at night, you could tell what was once a teenager's room, the master bedroom, a children's room.

 

You decided to take the teenager's room, it felt a bit more like a place you belonged than the master bedroom, because the bed was so large that it felt like it was swallowing you entirely when you laid on it. The walls were a strange, bleached grey colour - and on the walls were paper tracks and stains where posters had been torn off. There were a few still left - for some movies that you never saw but knew of vaguely, like Cloverfield, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull - and ah! A Cirque du Freak poster! They made that into a film? There were so many books for it! You remember being fourteen and reading them under the desk at school and reached out for the poster, tracing your fingers over the title - _The Vampire's Assistant._

 

You could almost be human here, but then Jackson happened.

 

_Give me a chance._

 

You could hear Rick in your mind, and remember his kindness as you began untangling earphone wires delicately as they managed to screw themselves into an incorrigible ball in your pockets. Rick gave you these. Rick Grimes gave you these because he was kind - you reminded yourself. Unfortunately, there wasn't much in the way of books, you saw a broken radio and surround sound system that you could work on in the morning, before finding a CD and DVD collection. Smiling, you reached for them - you were thinly aware that they were starting to get phased out over time, but your mother still had her vinyl collection which had been your segway into music as a small child, so you cherished classics and held onto physical media kicking and screaming.

 

It seemed like you weren't the only one, and now the world had gone to shit, you were glad for that fact.

 

Maybe you would discover some new music today, something that was Warren Zevon - you reached for an all green CD, and slid it into your CD player, before laying in the unfamiliar bed, and hearing soft acoustics fill your ear - you needed it. You couldn't stand to be alone with your own thoughts, not right now, you needed to drown out Jackson, and then Rick, and now Negan.

 

_Please stay._

 

One last chance. You'd give them one last chance, because you hadn't figured out where to go - you had places to go, you could maybe try your luck in Prescott again, but you'd took a lot since you left. You had left your own trail of distrust with the communities you'd flitted in and out of, because you had no intentions of sticking around, and you'd pilfered plenty, albeit never selfishly, only enough for you to keep going on, and in the grand scheme of things - stealing to fuel one person wasn't a lot but in the apocalypse, meant everything. You knew that the two communities close to each other had a name for you, _the Spider -_ the Highway Hounds knew about you, you'd even dare say they _wanted_ you, you were someone of many unique skills.

 

Had you not pissed off The New Frontier, you might have even been good for them, but now you wondered if they might shoot you on sight. So, you could just go East. Way East. There was still that strange, creepy fellow that Gerald - the pharmacy guy, said he was running with. You'd met him exactly once and found something about him slightly off, not in a dangerous way you thought, but you didn't want to risk it. He seemed like one of those more cult like personalities, and you were familiar with that.

 

But he said you were welcome, so if all else failed, you could head East to Alpha Centauri, a place you had yet to mark on your map because you weren't one hundred percent certain on the location.

 

You felt your insides ache as you remembered the events prior, and forced yourself to try to sleep, blasting the soft acoustic music as loudly as you could - gentle masculine voices lulling you to rest, the album titled funnily enough _Someday We Will Forsee Obstacles_ \- something you couldn't help but find very fitting. You stuffed the other CDs you found into your gym bag, and faced the world despite the overwhelming temptation not to.

 

It played on loop when you woke up, and now you had some rest, you were absorbing it properly and heading tiredly to your shift, ignoring everybody. That was the beautiful thing about music, everyone elses noise turned off and it was just yours, and you could finally appreciate it, letting _Lost Bird_ fill your ears. The lyrics were enough to make your insides lurch, but it was liberating in a strange way, letting other people let it out for you. People's mouths moved, and you could see them look at you - but you didn't care.

 

You looked at Morgan and took an earbud out - hearing him ask if you were okay but not really, just lipreading it mostly. You just shrugged, and put the earbud back in and walked past him, heading for your shift. When you arrived, the man was asleep, and you learned later that you would be able to give him food from now on.

 

Apparently, Morgan thought Negan was making some sort of progress, but he didn't quantify or elaborate on what kind of progress, but he seemed to think you were more responsible for it, because the methods of his old Akaido instructor didn't seem to be working on Negan the way they'd worked on Morgan and then eventually, the almost unchangeable Wolf he had once captured in that very cell. You made no effort to wake the man, watching him lay on the folded up jacket, you checked his bucket silently, before throwing a small, furry but none too thick, and rather ugly zebra sheet you had found in your home.

 

You decided when you left that if you were going to stay, the man wasn't going to stew in his own filth, and you would pay his support forward by supporting him back, even if he wasn't a very good person.

 

He woke up when he felt the blanket thrown on him lazily through the bars, and blinked in confusion, feeling it around his hips before glancing down, wiping the sleep out of his eyes. The days were hot and sometimes humid, but the nights were always cold, you knew that much.

 

"I'm not going to let you stew in your own filth," was the good morning that the older man recieved, before being thrown a wet towel, that landed on the floor with a dull squelch. He tiredly raised a brow at you, before slowly sitting upright. "Because if you do, it means I am too," you added "-since I'll be sitting with you for longer. Morgan's giving me more responsibility. He seems to think I do better here, and I think after what happened with Jackson, he understands I'd rather be down here rather then out there and facing people I embarrassed myself in front of,"

 

Negan frowned - you shouldn't have to feel embarrassed, but he didn't say anything.

 

"Being that I can't drag you into the showers, an old fashioned catlick will have to do," you said dryly, gesturing to the wet towel, before reaching into your bag and drawing out a light pastel green shirt and some slightly darker pants, and yes, even boxers. You went into Jackson's now-empty house and decided to commandeer his clothes, since he wouldn't be using them any time soon, and it's not like anybody had the gall to stop you, not after what he did - and almost did.

 

"Thanks," he said in confusion, giving you an inscrutable look. "Is this for yesterday?"

 

"Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth, that's what my mother used to say," you said stiffly, before glancing down at his leg chains and sighing. "I will loosen those for a moment so you can get changed properly," you said, standing up and heading into his cell without use of a lockpick anymore. You trusted him not to run, and he loathed to admit it, but even if he had the strength and will to bolt past you and somehow sneak out of Alexandria, he had nothing to go to.

 

"Right, yeah, forgot about those," he said dryly "-they've been on me so long I've sorta got used to it,"

 

You didn't say anything as you crouched near his feet - this was the closest you'd been to him in his cell, again, feeling like you were very much in his personal space. You looked at the state of his beard, and saw it getting rather ferocious, to a point it might as well have been a black-grey (now mostly grey at the bottom) bush, and sighed. You brought a traditional shaving blade from Jackson's bathroom on a whim, and what was left of his shaving foam, but you weren't sure you trusted him with something sharp, he might not hurt you - but he could probably hurt himself. It'd ruin all of Morgan and Rick's plans too - whatever they were, so you bit down on your lip as you quickly backed out of the cell, heading for your bag.

 

"You're also kind of getting that crazy hobo sort of look about you, so..." you trailed off, pulling out the foam and the razor, making him actually smile - a real smile, not a smirk or a sarcastic sort of one.

 

"You beautiful bitch!" he all but exclaimed "-you have _no_ idea how itchy this shit's been getting," he furrowed his brow "-doubt you've got room for a bigass mirror though,"

 

"No mirror, I looked," you said apologetically "-I'm also the last girl to ever own anything close to a compact, but, I mean - I can do it, that was kind of the plan anyway. I um, I somehow think Morgan wouldn't be happy if I started handing you sharp objects," you said lamely.

 

Negan rolled his eyes, but continued to grin.

 

"I sort of figured, but didn't want to assume," he said sarcastically - yeah, he didn't actually expect you to hand over the sharp object, but he still tried his luck anyway. You huffed at him, seeing the transparent tactic for what it was and proceeded to get on your knees - oh yeah, Now you were dangerously in his space, you couldn't exactly shave him and not be in his space, but it was that or hand him the blade, which - you could hear your brain screaming at you not to do.

 

It was also screaming at you not to be this close to him, so thanks for that - conflicting and wholly useless instruction!

 

"Might as well do it now and not get hair all over your new clothes," you said, pulling out scissors - oh yeah, it was big enough to need scissors first. You had a sheet just to try to take up the hair and showed a large amount of forethought. It seemed that while you had struggled, you thought about what you could do to try to make Negan's situation just slightly less disgusting, and this was the best you came up with.

 

You found yourself cutting his beard and trying very hard not to look at him directly, or even breath too much, because it reminded you of just how close you were, and every fight or flight instinct you had was raised and in tight coil, ready to unfurl at the slightest hint of trouble.

 

"You put a lot of thought into this," said Negan in surprise, glancing without moving his head - into your open gym bag, and seeing a smaller hand towel which he supposed was for wiping the shaving foam after so he didn't have to use the body towel that would be for cleaning weeks of dirt and male sweat off his body and God knows what else.

 

"I couldn't sleep," was your curt response, frowning as whole clumps of hair tumbled down his front, making you shake your head and quickly change the subject. "Fucking hell, it's like trimming a hedge,"

 

"Just as long as you shear that shit and don't make it into a topiary, I think we're good," he added - smiling slightly, making you snort before you could stop it. _No! Stop it! Stop being charming, you're a horrible bastard! -_ Your mind started to whine, but you ignored it. You had a job to do. You were sat directly in front of his admittedly much larger body, and felt dwarfed even on your knees, as he sat with his large, long legs crossed. He was immensely broad too, and you were not a slender sort - your muscular form had made you wider than more svelt, thin, fine female bodies, but you were _nothing_ on Negan.

 

Finally, when you could actually see his jawline, there was the delicate process of spraying cold foam on him, and you smirked slightly, unable to contain it when you leaned back and saw his face. He did look slightly like Santa Claus. A very, very grumpy sort of Santa Claus. A very buff and younger Santa - but a Santa nonetheless.

 

"What?" he said impatiently, now just rather desperate to have his face liberated of the fuzz.

 

"Nothing," you said with a small smile, before delicately moving the razor to his left cheek first, before realising that this was going to be a lot more interpersonal than your imagination played it out to be. You swallowed audibly, moving your free hand to his face, and thanked whatever powers that be, that he wasn't talking, distracting you, or otherwise making this any harder than it needed to be. Your left hand held him under the chin and you began the delicate process, gently scraping the blade down his skin, revealing a soft, smooth and admittedly flawless finish underneath. Around his cheek there was less stubble, the hair just seemed to come down with ease, but it got a bit more abrasive the lower you went, but you were delicate nonetheless, determined not to nick him.

 

You paused when the foam gathered all over the blade and your fingers, to wipe and continue, which is when he'd talk.

 

"Damn, you're delicate little thing," he said softly "-wouldn'ta thought it, lookin' at ya," - for some reason, that made you react with an involuntary blush. You'd been called a lot of stuff over the years, but you weren't sure delicate was one of them and said as much. You found your heart pounding loudly when you moved near his lips, silently doing his upper lip without any prompting, you were truly delicate, and he pulled his lips in just to make it easier, but you were so close you could feel his eyelash brush one of your arms and it was just ever so slightly too close for comfort.

 

"Thorough too," he added when you pulled back.

 

You were a little bit stressed on how much pressure to apply, being that you weren't used to shaving other people, but you didn't want to go over and over and make this longer than it needed to be, you could feel his breathe against your exposed skin and that was frankly, close enough. You swallowed thickly, moving onto his jawline, and then his right - without being told to, moving for his neck. He tilted his head back in a sigh of relief, he could at least talk now because his moving jaw wouldn't effect much from the chin down.

 

"I'm full of surprises," you exhaled out shakily, trying to find your own cocksure, confident tones but struggling.

 

"No shit," he said in reply, closing his eyes. "Man, I've paid actual fuckin' barbers and ain't had it this good," touching his face with the back of his knuckles which you had smoothed clean, even the stubborn stubble felt softer and had an impeccably good close to the grain cut that would be hard pressed to beat.  "Fucking hell, I'm not even sure I do it this good. You do this shit a lot?"

 

"No," you said quietly "-but I'm highly skilled with the knife, always have been. I do the cleanest animal skinnings you've ever seen too," you added, with some small amount of pride, hearing him let out a low noise of approval, in this world, that was an invaluable skill. "Guess it translates to a good close to the grain shave,"

 

"Guess so," he sighed, his adam's apple now very much in sight, you swallowed and backed away, almost scrambling as you did so, hungry to put some space between your bodies, you pretty much threw the face flannel at him.

 

"And we're done!" you said quickly, eyes stuck on his face - he noticed the intensity of your stare, and felt around his neck and jawline with an appreciative sort of look. He picked up a bowl Morgan had left earlier, and with a brilliant idea, used it's reflection as a mirror and let out a low whistle of approval, still feeling your stare on him. When he noticed you were still looking - slightly in a daze, he raised a brow, putting the bowl down.

 

"Looks like I'm goin' to the ball after all, ain't I pretty?"

 

It snapped you out of your daze, and you quickly played off the staring - it was the first time you'd seen his face outside of the layers and layers of hobo fuzz he'd been gathering, the beard had been suitably immense, and it was difficult to see his lips sometimes, but now you could (and you had, intimately closely) - and...the rest of him. It was pretty apparent he had a fantastic jawline, and once you'd gotten rid of the salt and pepper facial hair, which had aged him forward a few years when it got as thick as it had and showed more grey than black, he finally looked like he was actually forty.

 

"Who knew there was an actual face under all that shit," you said casually, scrambling out of his cage and letting him pick up the body towel.

 

"I can um, give you some privacy now," you said, glancing towards the door, only for him to give you a look of surprise - because he didn't expect it.

 

"You probably shouldn't leave if you've got the cage unlocked and the chains off, what would Morgan say?" he teased, making your face burn because he was telling you to stay, and you wrote it off as typical Negan banter, but unfortunately, he did raise a pretty valid point, and while you were sure he wouldn't run, you couldn't be this irresponsible, not after losing control and getting Jackson executed. You glanced at your CD player, and fell into your beanbag chair with a shrug. It's not like you hadn't seen naked people before - a lot of them, in fact, it just felt wrong that it was Negan, because he was in a cage. He was a prisoner, and sick as it was - as sick as Negan was, in terms of the power paradime, that made him, at this moment, more vulnerable than you. And you would be the last person to take advantage of the vulnerable, even if it was _Negan._

 

"Fine, whatever, it's not like I haven't seen more than enough naked people to last me a lifetime," you sighed, referencing the bayou but making him look at you oddly. You heard the sound of material dropping to the floor and made a point of raising your book up to your face even if you weren't actually reading any of the words on it.

 

"See, you can't just fuckin' float shit like that and not elaborate on it," Negan sighed, wiping down his arms first after pulling the sweat-soaked tank top over his head and throwing it next to the bucket. He had to admit, while it was a not-so-great solution, the towel was soaked through with water and almost dripping, it was cold too, but on a hot day - it was welcomed, and he could finally get rid of the smell clinging under his arms and around his legs, he sighed with relief working bellow the waistline. He didn't seem to care so much he was standing buck naked in a cage, he was just relieved to actually feel even slightly clean. To think, the Alexandrians managed to take so much away that wiping himself down with a wet towel felt like a fucking luxury.

 

"The Bayou," you said shortly "-the people I come from. You fuck up, you get humiliated, not killed. Not often, anyway. There's things worse than death and they'd do it. So when I say you could have it worse, I kinda mean it,"

 

You heard Negan curse, and glanced up over your book, only for your face to fill with redness, and his eyes catch yours.

 

"I really don't care if you look, might be less awkward if you did to be honest," he said with a cheeky grin, rubbing the clean edge left on the towel against the left side of his neck. He only wished he could watch the grease out of his hair, but he could settle for this, he could even see his skin lightening from where he scrubbed the dirt off of his body. "I was just...like, fuck, man. That and the shit you said to Rick, that's some pretty dark shit right there,"

 

"The world is worse than you could possibly imagine if you stayed holed up in the same places, building your empire, you don't really know," you bit out, trying to keep your eyes focused on the neck up. When he called out the awkwardness, you just put the book down and felt your face fill with heat. You'd seen naked men, you'd seen naked women, you'd seen naked people. Period. Naked Negan you hadn't seen, and you weren't quite sure if you had been ready. You expected just a body - but not _that_ body, the guy was just _broad -_ and you knew he was just from seeing him day to day and up close when shaving but it was glaring when he was shirtless.

 

"Tell me about it," he said "I don't know much of whatever the fuck is goin' on out there, and even when I did - I've seen your maps, you've really got around. Places I didn't even know had people,"

 

You didn't even pay attention to what he said, you were just staring, and he was standing, rubbing down his happy trail and the towel covering his privates but more so incidentally than on any kind of intent.

 

"....Anyone home...?" he said, with some amusement, resisting the urge to preen slightly, because it was rather hard not to - only for your mouth to blurt something out in your confusion, which you only regretted the second you heard it in your own ears and realised how suggestive and awful it sounded.

 

"You're fucking huge,"

 

He couldn't help it, he started laughing, grinning even - and with the beard gone you could see the healthy flush in his sallowed skin, and you flushed darkly - realising the many ways it could be taken, and very quickly rushed to add to it - to drown out his laughter, which sounded almost bark-like to you, which strangely fitted the man.

 

"I mean like - were you a bodybuilder or something?" you glanced away from his grinning face. "-I mean - b-back at the Louisiana Bayou I trained as Second Lieutenant under a Russian defector and he faught like, two wars and doesn't look like you. I mean, he's ripped, he's the reason I'm ripped, but you're... you're just a big dude - generally. I mean," you muttered.

 

"Well, you aren't actually that far off," he said, absorbing what you'd said and giving you a curious look. "-I was a gym teacher, in college I did amateur boxing - kinda bodybuilt for a bit for that image but never got super into it, most of those guys were on steroids anyway,"

 

You were surprised with how forthcoming he was, but it seemed for every little intimate fact you let slip, Negan was willing to meet you halfway and share one of his own without much prompting. He was doing it consciously too, because he was desperate to fill his imprisonment with something, and yes, you were still very much the best part of his day.

 

"So that might be why, your guy probably had more functional muscle. Not sayin' mine ain't - but he didn't build for the look I'm guessing, and even though I stopped, some stuff stuck, I guess," he smirked and almost asked if you liked it, but decided to latch on that sliver of information he had about you. This was the closest thing to entertainment he even had, and like a dog with a bone, he wasn't able to let this go.

 

"Second Lieutenant, huh? You're like what, twenty? You said I was twice your age," he added.

 

You shrugged.

 

"Twenty or nineteen, I dunno. Don't really care. I was fourteen during the Collapse, in an airport during a holiday. Got flown to New Orleans and then shit happened, ended up in the Louisiana Bayou with the survivor outpost located on a military base. From about fourteen onwards I was under an on-site professor doing stuff to distract me from the whole...dead people coming back to life thing, and then First Lieutenant Sergei Sokolov picked me up, and then... yeah," you made a lame shrug, moving both muscled arms against your sides to demonstrate the constantly on display strength.

 

"Shit, guess you came apocalypse ready right on the tin, that's badass," said Negan, looking at you appraisingly "-and it explains a fuckin' lot, like, you had that kinda military harshness about you, I just thought you were on the rag but now it makes sense," his mind was reeling, trying to put things together. His image of the Louisiana Bayou wasn't a pleasant one, just from the things he heard you say to Morgan and Rick, and now this. It seemed not every experience you had there was a horrible one, but clearly he was missing a lot of blanks, and he didn't know if you'd ever fill them.

 

You gave him an unimpressed look.

 

"If I'm on my period you'll fucking know,"

 

He grimaced, before dropping the towel that was covering him and making you squeak in surprise, darting your eyes everywhere else except - there - but managing an awkward glance out of your peripherals as he pulled up the new clothes over his legs.

 

"Can I ask if you're deciding to stay?" he said suddenly, changing the subject - you looked at him and backed away from the cell a bit, seeing him walk close to the cell. You froze as he put his hand on the door and slowly creaked it open.

 

Oh no.

 

No, no, no, no.

 

He was not supposed to be out of the cage, this whole 'treating Negan humanely' was precipitated on the trust that he wouldn't do anything stupid and illogical, but he was doing it right now. You glanced backwards to the door and moved in front of it almost on instinct, and gave him the wariest look. You were ready to demonstrate techniques Sergei taught you to take down people way out of your weightclass and right now, you'd probably need it to restrain him and get him back in there.

 

"You should probably get back in that cage," you said tightly, feeling your atmosphere get invaded as he slowly walked out of it and walked towards you. He saw how your hackles were raised and put both of his hands up in a surrendering and hopefully calming gesture, glancing at his prison, and then at you, recalling your words from earlier.

 

"Relax," he said, as soothingly as he could manage. "Unclench a second, I'll go back in, I just... needed to walk without chains for a second, and - try to convince you to stay,"

 

Oh.

 

You still looked at him warily, letting him stretch his legs and leaned against the door in small, slight panic, pushing the button on the doorknob to lock it from the inside in case Morgan came in.

 

"I don't know if my days are numbered, darlin' - all things considered, they probably are. So, yeah, I'm about to be a real turdbasket right now, and ask you to stay because it might be the last good experience I have. You know I don't have nothin' left. My Saviors lost," he glanced away from you for a moment " - I - lost."

 

"I'm staying!" you blurted out "I decided last night! One last chance. That's - that's all they get. If I don't get any joy I'm going to head east and look for a place where I was already offered sanctuary. I mean, I got vibes from it but not necessarily dangerous ones, just weird ones. That's why I was wandering around on my own after I got attacked by Junkrats," you said quickly.

 

"You got attacked by junkrats?" he furrowed his brow, remembering where you marked them on your map - the garbage people! The ones who allied with the Saviors and turned on Rick - yeah, he wouldn't be surprised that they'd do something like that, they were a pathetic sort of resource at the end of the day. "The garbage people?"

 

You sighed and remembered he didn't know everything that you told others, because in his cage, his world extended to you and Morgan and that was about it.

 

"Yeah, it's why I didn't have much of nothin' when Officer Friendly found me. I set up nearby not knowing it was inhabited and they put a bin liner over my face and threw me into a BMW, woke up covered in bruises and most of my shit gone sans my waterbottle, CD player, one twinkie and a single tampon. Which, wow, how sweet and generous of them," you said sarcastically "The only reason they didn't find my empty gun was because it was in a hidden compartment,"

 

"They're assholes," said Negan casually "No real loyalty or jack like that, useful assholes, but assholes."

 

"If I didn't find anything in my run or a nice place to set up and a salvagable car I was just going to head east until I found Alpha Centauri - it's - I met a guy from there. Good guy. Tried to help him on a pharmacy run but he got himself killed. Ended up going to his meeting point to tell his boss, and yeah - he extended the invite. But...I dunno... vibes," you shrugged.

 

"Vibes are usually right," said Negan after a moment "-It's you pickin' up on somethin' not bein' right but your brain ain't quite figured out what part in their pattern of behaviour is unnerving and setting off your alarms, your subconscious has but your rational brain can't make heads or tails of it. So...vibes."

 

You looked at him in surprise, only for him to repeat himself.

 

"I told you I went to college," he said idly, walking into your space until his tremendous form leered over you, and you found yourself staring at his incredibly broad, hair-lined chest and finally feeling how small you were in comparison. "May I?"

 

"May you what?" you said in confusion, before seeing his hands hovering over your shoulders, you nodded slowly despite your brain screaming at you not to do it - feeling yourself getting absorbed into his atmosphere - and Carl's words in the back of your mind.

 

_He's manipulative dad, they should rotate shifts._

 

 

You found your voice, and found it small and a bit strangled as you forced yourself to look at his clean-shaved and admittedly, very fine, sculpted face.

 

"You're giving _me_ vibes here," you managed shakily with a small nervous smile, feeling his hands on your shoulders - but they didn't move. They were large and easily covered your strong biceps, not moving the straps of your sports bra but feeling bits of raised skin and scarring under the ends of his finger tips - _and he still didn't have a fucking shirt on._

 

"I'm not going to hurt you. I just wanted to be able to do this before when you started vomiting, but I couldn't. You're doin' good after Rapey McGee, right?"

 

God, even when he was trying to be comforting, he was still Negan.

 

You choked at the name, you'd heard him say it before but it seemed he was sticking with it, determined to denegrate Jackson even though he was dead now.

 

"It's another day in the office for me," you said, glancing up at him. "Honestly, I don't even know why I got so upset. It ain't like this shit hasn't happened ad infinitum but a million times worse. I got around, I've kinda seen it all. We're all fucked up, every last one of us. Why do you think I'm nice to you? I'm not a good person either, even if I'm being good _to_ people, every community I've been in has had it's own.... thing. I can only really say Prescott was kind of okay but I didn't stick around long enough to see that get ruined too. I guess... it's 'cos for a second, I wanted to believe Rick about the people here. And for a while, I thought Jackson was really cute, and nice, and sweet,"

 

You felt the embarrassment creeping up on you as Negan gave you an impassive, inscrutable stare, looking down from his tremendous height.

 

"And I think that I felt a little bit extra stupid, because I kind of brought this one on,"

 

He scoffed and shook his head.

 

"Couple of things. One, you shouldn't be fuckin' used to it, it's fuckin' disgustin' and not right and that fuckin' boils my brisket like you have no goddamn earthly idea how pissed off that makes me that this is a 'day in the office' for you - or anyone. That ain't the kinda world I'd want to live in and it shouldn't be anyone elses either. Point fucking two, it takes a real piece of work to do something like that. Men who can't work for pussy the old fashioned way aren't men, they're worms, and to be honest, it's usually a power thing,"

 

"Oh, I know," you bit out "-I was raised army style, it's been a thing since humans have been a thing, a tool of power and subjugation. I hate it, but it's been that way for centuries."

 

"And - we're fucking past that. Collapse or not, we don't go fucking backwards, or we may as well wipe our asses with our hands and call it a fucking day," retorted Negan, you found him shaking you slightly, whether he realised he was doing it or not was another question.

 

"There ain't _no_ passable fuckin' excuse for it, you don't _bring it on you,_ and y'know, being a guy and all, I can tell you that I wasn't born with this deep, unyielding urge to stick my dick in everything with a heartbeat whether it wants it or not, because we're not fucking animals, and guys who do it - _they are._ Fucking Christ, all this study and nobody bothered to iron this out for you? Just because you _expect_ it from your war history and all that military bullshit you were raised with doesn't mean you accept it, you should hold humanity to a higher standard, because God - would _you_ fucking do that to someone? Rape them?" said Negan bluntly, and honestly you were blown away.

 

You didn't expect this talk, and especially not from Negan of all people.

 

"Of course not," you said in a quiet, faded tone.

 

"Well there's your answer then, I don't wanna hear no more retarded bullshit about asking for it, alright?" he exhaled slowly, before shaking his head. Rick should be saying this. Not him. "-We're the survivors here. That means we make the rules. Society is what _we_ make it, and we make it where that kinda shit isn't fucking okay, _we_ make the rules, so don't just accept a big heaping pile of shit just because it's what you've been served your whole goddamn life,"

 

You swallowed thickly, and glanced at the floor, seeing his large feet near yours as he held your shoulders.

 

"So fuck Jackson, he deserved to die. Don't lose an inch of goddamn sleep over it. Kill Jackson. Kill any of those bayou assholes if they did it to you and you saw them again, and if anyone tries it? Get your pretty knife out and slit their fucking throats, you look like you could do it," he breathed. "You got that tough look about you."

 

You smiled weakly, forcing yourself to raise your head up - the fear about being around him this close was slowly starting to ebb. Slowly.

 

"I've done things most people probably wouldn't dream of doing. Bad things, mostly. But yeah. I... I probably could. I will. I won't..." you swallowed thickly. "I won't let it happen again,"

 

He smiled.

 

"Good girl, but it's not all on you. Fuckin' Rick should have known his people better, and if shit like this did manage to go down again, fuckin' shame on them. You're like, 5"4 if you round up, Jesus Christ, you're a goddamn shortass. If some needle dick motherfucker manages to overpower you somehow, you shouldn't beat yourself up over that shit either, got it? Expect better out of people."

 

You nodded slowly, feeling your face start to radiate with heat as you looked up at him and felt your heart starting to pound.

 

"You should probably put those leg binds back on me now," he said - effectively ending the intimacy, letting go of your shoulders, and slowly heading back for the cage.

 

You let out the breath you didn't even know you'd been holding - the dynamic was changing, you could feel it, both of you could feel it. It was shifting in such a way that you weren't sure any of you knew how to stop it or even if you should, or could. You couldn't even tell Tara, or Morgan - or anyone really, because they would berate you for getting this close in the first place.

 

What a fucking mess.


	5. Worn Out Seams

You sat there and felt yourself getting tired, waiting for it all to be over. You answered Tara’s questions, all of them, without obfuscating or trying to divert because the more you would, the longer it would be. You told them about your history – what you were good at, what you’d learned in the bayou and how you could support Eugene in terms of producing bullets for Alexandria. Rick spent some time pointing out the places on your maps, before copying them onto his own.

 

He asked curiously where you’d go if you left, you shrugged, and just said east and didn’t elaborate further. You trained a small group of Alexandrians, and found yourself being watched by Rosita – she had an inscrutable expression on her face, frowning as you picked up a man by the shoulder and forced him back into rigid stance. It was Tara who found you after, dying to talk with you in a way that wasn’t heavy and riddled with questions about your past.

 

“I think you remind her of someone she lost,” she said “-especially that you’re military, kinda – y’know?”

 

“Abraham, right?” you said, shortly, wiping the sweat off your forehead with the back of your hand after the long session.

 

“Ain’t my fuckin’ job to pull her out of her funk, if this is what you’re getting at, she can talk to me like a human being when she’s pulled the stick out her ass herself,” you said shortly, glancing at the woman. “We’ve all got shit to deal with, not all of us have the luxury of throwing tantrums about it,”

 

Tara winced – tantrum was a bit harsh, but considering how Rosita had been to you and how she’d been treating everybody in the wake of Abraham, she understood, even if she didn’t fully agree.

 

“Even the way you talk,” she noticed “I mean, it’s different, but also kind of similar. You have that bluntness, I guess,”

 

You shrugged.

 

“I can get that I suppose, being on a base kind of….gets you in a certain mental place, and I was under First Lieutenant Sergei Sokolov, lived through two wars and wasn’t about to put up with any of my shit,” you sighed “-So I guess I’ve kind of inherited that,”

 

“You mentioned him a lot,” said Tara, recalling the discussion you’d had earlier “-you must really admire him,”

 

“Leaving him behind was the hardest choice I ever made,” you said bitterly “-but he knew I was leaving, he stayed so he could divert search parties when I escaped the Louisiana bayou with my mum, he was a hero,” you confessed.

 

“You sound like you still miss him,” said Tara sympathetically.

 

“I can count all the people I care about on one hand, so yeah, Tara. I kinda do.” - you said shortly, before falling on your backfoot, pivoting to turn to the small cluster of Alexandrians and ordering them to attention, watching them tiredly pick themselves up and wipe the sweat off their bodies. Tara found herself leaning back to watch besides Rosita in silence, watching you assume a wide stance and pluck out a man by the name of Lawrence. He was one of the more dedicated Alexandrians when it came to being trained, even before you were on the scene. She found herself surprised that you'd made a decision to teach them proper basic combatives skills - complete with grappling and dealing with direct blows.

 

You divided the session into two, knifework which was dedicated exclusively to dealing with the dead, and hand to hand, which you loudly said - was for dealing with survivors, because, you said - at some point, the dead will become a backdrop to your lives and you will realise that the living present far more complex dangers than the ones who have died.

 

"We know," Lawrence had said, wincing on the ground as you had managed to swipe out his legs and send him sprawling onto the asphalt. You held out your hand silently and raised him to his feet, wiping some of the dirt off his clothes passively before barking out that the session was done. The men and women picked themselves up - some looked tired, others feeling immensely satisfied from the kind of work you put them through - because once you got over the heartburn, it was rather liberating.

 

 

Yeah, Tara mused - she could understand why Rick wanted you to stay so badly.

 

 

She watched you stride past Rosita and her, heading for your shift nonplussed, and could only wonder what she could possibly do to make you actually like it here in Alexandria. It seemed that, especially since the Jackson incident, you operated mostly on autopilot. You engaged with Rick because he asked you things, and you'd done so again with Tara because she'd been tasked with questioning you, but even that didn't seem like an interpersonal interaction, it felt like a one-sided interview.

 

Reporting, that's what it sounded like - you sounded like you were giving a report, everything had gone strictly business, and suddenly the girl laughing with her face covered in blackberries seemed like a group hallucination, because you shut down, and turned utterly cold in a way she struggled to describe. Could they blame you, could anyone really blame you? You weren't used to sticking around and staying in one place, you were on the outside looking in, kind of like how their Eugene was, but for different reasons.

 

It was also insulting in a strange way that you would rather spend time with the prisoner than any of them, but according to reports from Morgan, it was as though you spent most of the time he'd stuck his head in trying to break the man without even really realising that you were.

 

If anyone deserved to be broken, Tara thought - it was Negan.

 

She watched you walk away, rippling with strength, with the death of an Alexandrian already under your belt - and wondered, briefly, if she should pity the man at all, but remembering all that he did - would have done, and taken away from them, she found herself empty inside, even though she was perhaps the more logical when it came to thinking about the Saviors. Tara at least understood that there were no good guys or bad guys, and for some people, even their settlement were the bad guys - like the women of Oceanside. Rick had taken all of their guns to war with the Saviors, and to them, the Alexandrians were likely their enemy.

 

Nobody was good in this world. Nobody came out smelling of roses.

 

She cringed when she thought about some of the things you'd said, and all of the implications, and couldn't help but think you probably knew this fact better than most.

 

* * *

 

 

He watched you from his corner of the room, slouched in his cell, with the ugly sheet around his legs and torso, lazily drooping down his chest. He didn't sleep too well, but he slept better than he had in a while, and in truth, his mind was awash with the events of the day previous. You were his only friend - of a sort - even if you were his jailor, and yesterday, you had killed an Alexandrian, and yet all you'd wanted to do was finish out the night in silence. With him. You had a choice between him and Rick - and you'd chosen him. Why?

 

What was so comforting about being down in this smelly hellhole that you would want to stay here? Part of it was not wanting to be seen by others while you were obviously torn up, but another was that you had the choice to seek comfort from any of them, as they yearned to fix the shattered trust caused by Jackson, and you violently rejected it.

 

_Just get out! Sorry doesn't fix shit! It never has, it probably never will!_

 

He remembered your words, and all the things he'd said to you. He didn't regret them, but he was in two minds about whether coming out of the cage and broaching your personal space had been a good idea. He supposed he'd see depending on how you'd be with him today. Negan watched you put in a single earbud but leave the other down, something you only did if you were ready to hear him talk sometimes, and lazily keep your book on engineering on your lap.

 

You looked sweaty, he thought - a bit winded, the way your chest rose and fell like you'd just finished running.

 

"Did you go for a run?" he asked suddenly, making you glance up in surprise.

 

"Combatives training," you said shortly, turning a page with your finger lazily. "Officer Friendly has me teaching some of the people here - I divvy it up into two hours in the morning and two in the evening. An hour on knifework to deal with the rotters and an hour on hand to hand to deal with everything else."

 

He didn't say anything immediately, just giving you an appreciative look, he probably valued it more than most, especially with his kind of a past when it came to physical fitness at least. He struggled to equate the fact someone so young served in a position as a kind of lieutenant, but seeing how you were, he could understand it. The way you were, how you cut through everything like a hot knife through butter, he could understand that you commanded respect, even if he'd seen you truly vulnerable the day previous - but someone so damn young.... from fourteen onwards. Apocalypse ready.

 

He didn't even bother trying to hide that he was impressed.

 

"You got some pretty big lady balls then, huh?" he said with a grin, making you raise a brow. "You were a Second Lieutenant back with your old people, right? You said. Did you get to lead any of them?"

 

You were the only woman with any position of power and you'd still been violated for four years in order to keep it, and your mother safe - you wanted to bite out, but could see he was just trying to fill the time, trying to close the divide between you as you sat on the other side of the cell bars - and he'd already gotten so close yesterday that he didn't want the paradime change to stop, and to start drifting again. This was Negan's attempt at sinking his teeth in, and fucking _trying -_ as hard as he could. It's not like he had anything else.

 

"I had a vanguard," you said shortly "-I was also one of the only women given a position of power. Considering the things I had to do to keep that... I think I had a certain amount of respect, I dealt with the people above me when the First Lieutenant was out of reach," you also were the one to go to the Major on people's behalf, so yes, that respect was a given, as most of them would have sooner that into their hands than gone anywhere near that monster.

 

You felt a lump in your throat start to form - you were dangerously close to opening up, it wasn't like Tara hadn't forced it already.

 

"A vanguard of thirty considered elite trained men, five of those were sharpshooters, another five I had personally helping me with the military grade weapons we had because they needed manning. Big stuff. Guns that needed their own rail system or needed to be turreted, the kind of things that have kickback recoil that can shatter bones - the rest were just my boots on the ground guys. We did runs, and stuff," you said, furrowing your brows and remembering your time in the bayou. You remembered walking through the thick of the swamps, water going up your mountain boots and starting to seep through your jeans, with a heavy kalishnakov at your front and sledgehammer at your back, tracking the group of rebels from Wintersun that were going to head back to the French Quarter of New Orleans once they were out of the swamps.

 

"First Lieutenant Sergei Sokolov's job was to lead the main force through once the vanguard secured the area, I mean, you'd think it'd be the other way around but we used a lot of dirty insurgency tactics and stuff," you felt yourself rambling, falling into more pleasant memories,

 

Yes, this was stuff you were fucking proud of, because your mother had been proud. So proud.

 

"And Sergei's team had about fifty men in it, so he had higher management going on, before he'd steamroll in with the armoured trucks," you said shortly, and almost absentmindedly, blissfully unaware with the severity of which Negan was staring at you, hungrily taking in everything you'd told him. "I guess you could say I had the specialists, and he had the tanking team, we functioned pretty well. Ended up reclaiming the French Quarter from the rebels, though, with perspective, I almost wish I'd been on the other side," you said bitterly.

 

"Unfortunately, the bayou just has more guns, trucks, manpower and brutality to spare so, even if I did, I'd be on the losing side, so... I kept serving under the Major until I defected," you trailed off, realising you'd gone on a fair ramble, only to see Negan's expectant face through the bars, and then the man let out a long, low whistle.

 

"You have a _massive_ steel pair on you," he said with a grin "-Shit, I could listen to you talk like this all goddamn day. I have been missing a _lot,_ these couple of years. Hooooo-lyyyy shit," he chuckled. You glanced away from him as he laughed, it was strange to actually be able to see the full range of his expressiveness now the bush beard was gone.

  
"Yeah well," you said uncomfortably with a shrug "-None of it good, really. I've done enough things to keep myself awake at night," you admitted, which just enthralled him further. He wanted to know more - needed to know more - but most of all, he wanted more of yesterday to happen. More of you in his cage. More of feeling human and less like a rat in a cell, which he was sure was the intent behind chucking him in there to begin with, and he was still certain his days were numbered, so he'd rather fill them with something good. Tolerable.

 

It could be you, he decided.

 

"You would have flourished with my Saviors," he said after a long moment of deliberation. "They were built for people like you, and you wouldn't have had to do anything except continue being exceptional to keep your position, ain't no dodgy rapey bullshit with us. Just power - and respect,"" Negan paused "-Well. There was. We lost," he added, bitterness still present in his casual tone.

 

You blushed at being called exceptional - he hadn't even seen you in action.

 

"Seriously, that was my biggest no-no," he said, shuffling close to the bars so he could give you his most sincere expression, making you lean forward out of your beanbag chair slightly, hands falling over your book. "I like to think I could have kept you safe,"

 

You fell silent, remembering Rick's words - and sighing, hearing a version of them out of Negan.

 

"Nobody can keep anybody safe," you said quietly "Not anymore,"

 

He sighed, a big part of him knew that to be true, but shit, you were so fucking young, some part of you should still be able to trust in the goodness of others - in that someone could protect you. Hell, he thought Carl Grimes was as much of a badass as you but even he still trusted deeply in Rick and no matter what Negan did it was utterly unshakeable. You didn't have that. Who was your Rick Grimes? Was it Sergei Sokolov? He was long gone. Negan liked to think he had at least protected some people, he subjugated them yes, but his Saviors also provided protection, it was why he called them that to begin with. So who was your Negan? Who was your backbone?

 

He looked at you, and heard the sadness laced in your words, and knew instantly that you had no one.

 

 "Shit," Negan cursed, sighing, tilting his head back against the cell. "Shit, Little Lovely - you are way too fuckin' young to be speakin' like that,"

 

You scoffed, the world didn't give a shit about how young anybody w-- little lovely? You felt your mind freeze, but your insides warmed. It wasn't a malicious nickname, and it wasn't as though you didn't call everybody else something, so, it wasn't like you could complain per se, not without sounding like a hypocrite.

 

"Yeah well, the world doesn't give two shits and a fuck how young you are, everybody suffers. Some more than others. I gave up on this idea of universal fairness a long time ago, around about the same time I reasoned that God's asleep at the wheel, doesn't give a shit, or is long dead," you gave him a cold, impassive sort of look. "I've killed a bunch of kids, y'know. So many. Probably at least fifty over the years. Rotters - all of them, I stopped distinguishing shit like fairness a while back. There's no 'too young' or 'fairness' - or ...or fucking anything," you spat out, making him blink.

 

Wow.

 

He knew you were right, but something about it just revealed a sort of misery about you that he couldn't quite identify earlier, especially with your banter and joking, but now he could, and your sleepless nights made sense.

 

"All we can do is try to make the world liveable for the next man who manages to make it," and yet there it was, that stubborn glow of hope - something to be admired, Negan thought, until you explained why - and it was a rather dark and nihilistic sort of reasoning that he did not expect. "That's all there is anymore, even before the Collapse. I mean, I've read the books, the world can end a million other ways. Supernovas, a meteroid, the sun is probably going to die in a few billion years and all of humanity's accomplishments get wiped off the board anyway, so what does the dead walking even mean? Does it matter? We lost it all in the Collapse but truth is, we probably lost it all long before that. We're born into a world where our lives are tiny, infinitesimal and mean shockingly little, with tiny windows of time where we can do something that makes us happy. We're all born fumbling for meaning and there's still people who wasted all of their lives not knowing for sure what happens after but living shackled to beliefs and expectations that stopped them actually living,"

 

Negan leaned back, and listened to your soft, exhausted rant.

 

"Nothing matters, nothing we do matters, and we're all going to die. The best thing we can do is assign an arbitrary meaning to our lives and be happy with that, so I live in all my moments - because that's all there is for me. All of my feelings. I fall neck deep into everything and I invest fully like I have nothing left to lose because I don't. So when people turn around, and they hurt me. It hurts bad. When I want to have faith in something working - I really, really want it to work," you felt with every pore of your being and your thought process was a shockingly dark one, despite your oddly bright take on it, and it left him in a muted sort of shock.

 

He didn't really expect you to open up in this sort of a way.

 

"So when I sit here and I talk to you, this is me investing my everything, because it's the small moments that matter, because in the end, that's all there really is," you glanced at him, reaching into your bag, and getting out a small bit of cloth, unfolding it in your hands silently before revealing a small piece of - he stared in disbelief. Cake? You saw that one of the older women in Alexandria had used some of the newly acquired supplies from new trade routes to make cake, and it was just plain, delicious, buttery sponge, and silently broke it in half, sliding some across the bars.

 

He silently took it, closing his eyes as the decadent rush hit him.

 

"Jesus, anybody ever told you your thought process is dark as fuck?" he said, chewing contently. "-You have a weirdly happy take on it, but still, what the fuck, man?" he chuckled.

 

You shrugged.

 

"I'm not wrong though," you said, swallowing your piece of cake with a small, out of place seeming smile. "It's pretty liberating when you think of the big picture not really mattering, suddenly everything doesn't feel so high stakes,"

 

"Still!" said Negan insistently, he could barely wrap his mind around how surprisingly cynical you were "Fucking hell, how can you even bother feeling happy, or doing fucking anything?"

 

You shrugged, finishing your food and looking at him, honesty pouring out of your lips.

 

"I haven't been happy in a long time, I've forgot what I'm missing," you laughed, making a sort of dark joke about it, because that's just how the English tended to be - or how you were - and you waited for a smile but didn't receive one, just a dark, inscrutable expression. When you stopped laughing, you gave him an unsure sort of look - you felt a bit lighter that you'd spoken to him, it was a bit like a free therapy session, if you were honest, especially after the Jackson-related events not really making you want to talk to any of the others, but Negan was quiet, his brows drawn into a frown.

 

He found himself wanting to say that he could understand that - and he could. He was forty - he had a whole life before the world ended, and he lost his wife, the namesake of his bat - Lucille - and never quite got over it, he thought he had, but he never really did. He felt his emotions go down the drain and just be left in complete maelstrom, until all that was left was the man you saw today. He wanted to say in the hardest of hearts that he understood the sort of tangible misery that you revealed, a deep-seated depression, of a sort - that was caked under layers of independance and projected strength, but instead, he just found himself sighing. He had a life and he lost it, then made himself a better one, then lost it again, but he was old - as much as he loathed to admit it - he lived, and he had plenty of memories.

 

You'd been fourteen when the world ended, had everything robbed from you, and never got to experience that initial, adult joy - of having your life seem relatively put together, come home to the white picket fence and fuck, maybe even a puppy or something. He had something close to that - you had nothing, he looked at you and saw a tremendous absence - you had nothing, _nothing,_ and the implications left by these bayou people made it sound like the six or seven years you had with them were probably a pure, unmitigated hell.

 

"That's actually really fucking sad," he said softly, uncharacteristically serious - like he'd been when you came barrelling into the room, bawling that you had done a bad thing. He glanced at the bruising he had felt under his finger tips on your biceps, peeking through the straps of your bra. Your whole body was like that, with faded marks indented into very clear muscle, you were definitely beautiful - he wouldn't argue that, but you were riddled with flaws. So many flaws. All over, of different levels of severity and fade and he could only wonder how much he couldn't see from the waist down.

 

"But believe it or not, I kinda get it. We all have our shit, you probably... you sound like you have more than most though, kudos to you for not bitching about it and giving up," he said with a shrug - but he meant it, however blasé he sounded. He really did mean it. "A lot of kids would, I mean shit, I remember being a kid, I thought the world got pretty fucking dark the second I started getting boners and listening to rock and roll,"

 

You chewed on your lip, fighting the small smile on your face - it was strange imagining Negan young, and some part of you admittedly felt rather flattered that the deposed warlord thought so highly of you, it wasn't a sort of praise you were used to, clearly.

 

"Boy were you wrong, huh?" you said with a sarcastic little smirk, unable to fight it, the world with the dead rising was clearly a lot worse than whatever he thought it was as a teenager, and he responded by letting out a grim little laugh of his own. "Boo hoo, you get a stiffy now and then, you know what's worse than the dead getting up and eating the living?"

 

"What?" said Negan, feeling like this was a segway into a very inappropriate joke.

 

"The dead getting up and eating the living while you're on your period,"

 

Negan scoffed, and laughed a little louder.

 

"Alright, that's fair, you win. Definitely sucked harder for you than it did for me," he heard the track on your earbud change as the laughter died down and you two sat in silence, with you eventually going back to the book, with the sound of page turning being the only thing to break the silence. He hated the silence, and would do anything to keep you talking, so he shuffled to the bars, chains clinking across the floor and getting your attention. He ushered you over with a hand gesture, making you look at him warily, before slowly scooting over, getting up out of the chair and kneeling across from him through the bars.

 

"Okay, this has been bothering me for a while, what the fuck are you listening to? It sounds different from the old stuff," which he could only kind of faintly make out, but it definitely didn't sound like Warren Zevon anymore, making you blink owlishly in surprise, and mumble something about going through the CDs that had come in your new home, and saying you brought some along in the bag to try to get through during your shifts to see what you liked and didn't like. You furrowed your brow - you definitely felt closer to the man, and it's not like he had anything else to do, so with some small reservations, you glanced down at the earbud wire and slid down the divider so you could pull the left and right ear piece apart and stretch the cord as long as possibly, before handing him one for his closest ear. You shyly put your hand through the bars, offering it to him.

 

"You can help me go through it, if you want," you said, feeling somewhat shy.

 

Music was your thing - your escape from everything and everyone, so sharing it - somehow that seemed more intimate than all of the conversation that you had partaken in today with Negan, Tara and Rick combined. He silently took it, glancing at the symbol etched on it before sliding it into the correct ear, turning his back to the cell so you'd feel a little less uncomfortable, blinking in surprise when he felt your back through the bars - rippling muscle and all.

 

This way, you could place the CD player under the bars in that awkward nexus between freedom and imprisonment - and he could skip a track if he wanted.

 

"Can't think of anythin' I'd rather do, Little Lovely,"

 

You didn't question the nickname, and let Syd Matter's _To All of You_ wash over the pair of you in blissful silence, ignoring the delicate dance of fingers brushing each other over the volume buttons.

 

Now what you said made sense to Negan.

 

It was all about the little moments, and maybe that's why you chose him over the others - firstly because they betrayed your trust and he hadn't yet. You looked like you were coming apart at the seams and were doing everything you could to save face and stop it, so you stayed with him in your moment of weakness. Secondly, you seemed like the kind of person that would do damn near anything if it made that tiny, miniscule little blip of life seem like it meant something for even a second, and Negan had made it abundantly clear that he was certain his days were numbered. Perhaps this was you being kind, because in the end - nothing really mattered.

 

He frowned with his back to you, feeling how scarred your fingers and palm were when you rested it lazily atop the large, orange CD player, he felt you flinch as his own hand brushed them and felt so much raised, damage tissue, and had to wonder, again, just how much one little girl could stomach before she couldn't stomach anymore.

 

Every part of him wanted to find out more, but he also just wanted to live in this moment, listening to soft music that in any other scenario, he probably wouldn't even like.

 

"You should tell me more about the bayou sometime," he said softly, closing his eyes and sighing contently. "When you want to. Not when you have to."

 

You appreciated the end statement, acknowledging you'd had more than enough forced out of you earlier today, and smiled lazily, even though he couldn't see it. You found yourself feeling lighter every time you left this little room, so maybe watching the prisoner was doing you some sort of good. It was the closest you'd really spoken to anyone in a long time, you travelled too much - left too much behind - to have done this with the others.

 

"Maybe."

 

 


	6. Playing Doctor

What was he supposed to do, pretend that he couldn’t hear? He wished most days could have gone like yesterday, but seemed like you were having a quiet time now. Morgan was silent when you came in the Jailhouse, dumped your things by your beanbag chair – which he now used- and made a beeline for the bathroom, saying you’d take over when you were done.

 

You remembered hearing Morgan ask you what was wrong, or at least, seeing his lips move but not hearing him over the music. You did your typical shrug, hands shoved into the pockets of your combats, moving them only to dump your gym bag with a moody thud and head for the bathroom. It was fairly obvious just from your eyes you hadn’t slept well, though if you had to admit it, you were at a point where your soul had such a perpetual tiredness about it that no amount of sleep would fix it.

 

What the hell was Negan supposed to do, pretend he couldn’t hear you? Because he could. Far be it for him to judge what people did in the bathroom, considering he did his business in a bucket as of late, but when Morgan left and he was alone for a full half hour, he had to wonder if you’d fallen in or something. Then he heard you crying out – and he couldn’t pretend he couldn’t hear, not in the raw, dead silence of the Jailhouse.

 

You sat in the small, pristine bathroom. It was larger than the one back in your home in England, but everything was larger here. You put the lock down and sat on the toilet, feeling the overwhelming cramping pain in your gut, and smashed at the volume up key on your CD player, which was now resting precariously on the tank of the toilet, as you sat on it in dead-eyed silence, staring at your ankles.

 

You had been that way for the first ten minutes, feeling an overwhelming sickness brewing in your guts, and wanting to cry, for some inexplicable reason. Well. Not inexplicable, but why now? Why was it triggered now? Was it going to be like this every month? Sometimes it felt like it was, as if menstruating wasn’t shitty enough on its own. It was a break. It had to be. A psychotic break. You didn’t like when you had these. You didn’t have them often, but you couldn’t tell what would trigger one, and you didn’t know how to cope under them, except to try to withhold your agonised noises. You had survival to think about.

 

But right now, you were in Alexandria, and in a nebulous sort of way, you were safe. Safe enough to cry out. You remember staring at your bedsheets that morning, balking, and throwing them in a corner when they’d been stained in blood. Staring at your underwear, you felt that sickening feeling come up again at that ugly little patch of maroon and felt your body screaming in revolt as you sat on the toilet and let the music pound through your ears.

 

_-That there’d be torn up photos and lonely nights, cursing, crying and drawn out fights –_

You blasted it until it was almost deafeningly loud in the hopes it would pull you out of this horrible memory, like it could stop you digging your fingers into the meat of your thighs and get the heavy feeling off your chest. It felt like someone was sitting on it – on your heart – and the feeling was getting heavier until you couldn’t bare it and you could feel the bones of your ribcage threatening to fold in on you, spearing you through and through.

 

_\- Make-up sex and a brand-new start –_

_Oh God, it just hurt –_ the music was wholly unfitting but in truth you weren’t even listening to it, even if you liked it, it was just loud, screaming, monotonous music in the hopes of somehow stabbing through your ears and stopping the film reel playing in your mind. You could almost still somehow hear Professor Mattius in your ears, the only other man you loved as much as you loved Sergei Sokolov – the other who raised you when there was nothing and nobody else. You could still hear what his crying sounded like. Soft, quiet and dignified, but so very tangible, as he pressed his body up against the bathroom door.

 

_\- Broken promises for broken hearts –_

 

Your fingers dug into your thighs angrily as you looked up at the door – half expecting to see the man tumble in, ready to fall at your ankles and stare out blankly ahead as you haemorrhaged through your memory.

 

_“…Deadshot….? C’mon little bullet. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Matty’s here. I’m going to come in now but it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. Matty’s got you. You’re going to be oka—oh God. Little bullet… I’m so sorry.”_

You heard his words like he was still alive, still in the room, and felt your heart tearing itself in your chest like a cell splitting in two, and tilted your head against the hard porcelain and felt yourself almost gagging on your own tears and inward fury.

 

_“No!”_

 

You weren’t even sure if you said it outloud, or if it was just your memory with Mattius – where you’d screamed at him no, and begged at him not to come in, your face flaming with shame. But he’d barrelled in anyway, and fallen to your knees while you crossed your hands over yourself as though it would somehow take the knowledge of what the Major had done from him. But it didn’t.

 

 _“No! No, no, nonononononnono,”_ you hiccuped, feeling yourself gag on the memory, choking down your tears until they were sliding down your face.

 

_So much blood, blood everywhere, blood and blackness. Blood and blackness. Pain. Like you’re being torn in two down there. Pain everywhere. Mattius’s head resting against the side of your knee in the least sexual way, eyes closed and crying with you because he couldn’t protect you._

You could still taste the sulfuric taste in your mouth, like it was yesterday. You forced yourself to listen to the music, shaking yourself out of your memory and seeing your knees tremble on the toilet, forcing yourself to clean up. Crinkling the tampon wrapper – forcing yourself clean, you even used water, just to try to shake yourself out of that fucking memory.

 

You made the mistake of looking back in the bowl when you got up, and buckled to your knees at the sight of all that red, almost banging your head off the rim, and letting out a low cry, feeling an agony settle in your chest and the earbuds fall out of your ears as your CD player remained perched precariously at the top of the porcelain throne’s water tank.

 

You balked, everything from sight to smell made you sick all over, and hear the soft, agonised crying of the older man. Forcing yourself onto your shaking knees, you hit the flush violently, scooping up your CD player, washing your hands and just leaving, numbly heading for the cell.

 

Negan watched you plonk into the beanbag chair silently – your eyes were not bloodshot, like that day, but there were swollen. He could tell. Swollen and more tired than usual – he heard noises – he heard you crying, and crying out. Sobbing, and falling to what he assumed was the floor unless you had dropped something.

 

He glanced up at you, one leg out and one knee tucked up to his chest, head resting on his left shoulder with a soft but critical gaze.

 

“Hey you,” he tried gently.

 

You stirred, but didn’t really know what to say, just staring back at him, feeling your headache coming on. You were sure you couldn’t concentrate enough to read, all you could manage was music, and a lot lower volume than usual, because your head hurt so fucking bad.

 

“Hey,” you crackled out.

 

Somehow you looked worse than when you did during the Jackson event, and you weren’t even snotting everywhere this time.

 

“What’s going on?” he said, casually – but the serious intonation was there. You swallowed thickly, giving him your best confused look.

 

“I could hear you crying,” he said bluntly, making you grimace, and look away from him briefly.

 

Shit.

 

“I’m just on my period,” you said bluntly, closing your eyes “-nothing else.” He didn't react when you said that, remembering what you said last time, and that he'd know about it honestly, just from your hormones, but this had to be more than hormones. Girls didn't cry like that unless there was something actually wrong and he didn't have forty God-given years on this Earth to be able to not know when you were lying by omission. For fuck's sake - he'd been a gym teacher, he'd heard it all. He could tell you probably actually were on your period, but something had to be wrong for you to cry like that, and he found himself wanting to know.

 

Instead, you were trying to continue on from yesterday, silently showing him you'd picked some rock and roll - but of a different sort, with an almost 80s, gothic sort of sound that you admit if you weren't having a psychotic break while using it to drown out your memories, you enjoyed it.

 

He took the earbud and sat back to back from you through the cell bars like he'd done last night, but frowned. It just didn't feel right. It didn't feel right at all and he wanted to know. He wanted to know more about you, even when you slept on accident on the beanbag chair, before you curled up fetally, you'd lain right the way back on it, body arched beautifully, chest heaving in panic as more of your hair leaked out from your headwrap and you looked beautiful - like Ophelia drowning - before you curled up in on yourself in your nightmare.

 

He was fascinated by your suffering, especially as you seemed to know his rather intimately.

 

"I like this band, it has a kind of 80s sound to it, almost," said Negan "-I'd know," he grinned.

 

You breathed, but it sounded painful - and belaboured. Your head hurt, and it sucked.

 

"I like them too," you gestured to the album cover on the CD - with the words _She Wants Revenge_ scrawled on it. It was exactly your type of sound, evoking the kind of vintage noise that you'd grown up with, but being modern and grungy almost.

 

"So..." he trailed off - he mulled it over for a while, but there was no smooth segway into the topic, and he desperately wanted to broach it. He had to know. There was very little going on inside of his cell so all of the life in it was brought by either you or Morgan, and so it began and end with you guys, and if something wasn't right in your world - it wasn't right with his. He was a prisoner, his world started at an empire and had been gradually reduced to this room.

 

You.

 

"I ain't got no smooth segway into this so I'm just gonna ask you, do you always cry like that every shark week or is there somethin' wrong? Now, consider I was a fuckin' leader, and before that, I was a fuckin' gym teacher - so I'm pretty good when people half my age are lyin' or lyin' by omission to me," he said dryly "I've seen it all - and I'm thinkin' you might feel better getting it off your chest."

 

You were silent.

 

"You usually feel a lot better after yellin' at me," Negan pointed out "-and I'd like to know what's goin' on with you, being that you've been so good to me,"

 

He felt you shudder against him, and heard the sound of you shuffling - you were moving your knees up to your chest protectively, and your voice was soft, and quiet. You mulled over the words, first debating whether or not telling him was a good thing, you kept all of your cards close to your chest, but he wanted to know about the bayou - and not out of an interrogative need like Rick had. He wanted to know because he wanted to know more about you, not if you were a threat or were going to bring on people who were. Then there was the secondary debate - how do you even begin to tell someone about something like this? It might be easier if it was another woman but, pretending for a moment you were closer to Tara than you were, you don't even know how you'd tell her, and frankly, you weren't that level of close. You still probably spent more time with the prisoner than anyone else in Alexandria so far.

 

And he had your back after Jackson, when you could have been punished - which was the only real thing you feared. If they turned you out on your ear, you wouldn't have cared, but Rick could have shot you or something, and so Negan having your back - that had meant something. It had been important.

 

"I'm ashamed," you said quietly.

 

Whatever Negan expected you to say, it wasn't that. He searched for the right words to say - what could you be ashamed about? With the implications left by the bayou that it could be very, very dark - and it likely was, but he was an older and experienced person, and being that he had to iron out your beliefs regarding Jackson, he figured he could do it again. It seemed like someone had to, because nobody else did.He said as much, because with this many years on him, he had some experience.

 

"I might surprise you," he needled, before watching you get out a long, clear bottle from your gym bag, which he was starting to call your bag of tricks, because you seemed to bring something new each time he saw you. At first he thought it was water, before he got a whiff of the smell when you unscrewed the cap and it was enough to make his eyes water. Was it vodka? Absinthe? He didn't know - all he knew was, it would probably be enough to put a few hairs on your chest.

 

"Well, I'm not drunk enough for this conversation," at his questioning look, your lips twitched "Found it in Jackson's place. I figured we deserved a drink on him,"

 

You shuddered against the cell and he watched as you downed what was typically a shot drink, even if he wasn't entirely sure on the content, he knew it was likely a shot drink.

 

He didn't bother to hide the fact he was a bit impressed when you got through almost a quarter of it before you threw your head forward and closed your eyes with a rough wince. That was easily three shots at once - and you passed it through the cell to him. He was a lot more reserved about it, he didn't sip, but being older, he seemed to know how to divvy up his shots, and drink from it in a short burst, sharing an indirect kiss as his lips wrapped themselves around the neck of the bottle.

 

This wasn't really how he saw the evening going, drinking the world's worst vodka like it was nectar and getting buzzed with a woman half his age, but it could be a lot worse, he mused. He watched as you slumped forward, resting your forehead against one of the bars of his cell daringly, putting your head against the wide bars in a vulnerable sort of way, breathing out raw alcohol as you let out a long exhale and turned the music down until it was just background noise.

 

"You've got some tolerance on you for a shortass," he asked with a small grin, feeling his chest sit heavy but his mind lighten - the way he usually felt with a small buzz.

 

You closed your eyes and let out a deep, and rather bass-y burp, distinctly unattractive, but Negan didn't really care, it was rather impressive, if he was honest. He'd be hard pressed to try to beat it - he was right about big things in small packages.

 

"It's about the only useful thing I ever got from my old man," you said humourlessly, before giving your lower torso a playful thump with your curled up fist where your liver was, necking more of the bottle, but more closely this time, as you reached right through the cage for it, and didn't throw yourself back to drink it, but instead tipped it into your lips from your position pushed up against the bars, so you could hand it back easier. "The hardest working liver in the fucking apocalypse!" you all but cackled, slowly leaning back into your beanbag chair, tossing some of your bangs back as they fell out of the red makeshift tignon you tied the majority of your long, dark hair with.

 

Oh yeah, the buzz was getting you now. Finally.

 

When you said that, he had to wonder how much you managed to drink, and considering your bizarre depression-hinting nihilism, the implied familial alcoholism and the implications of your past, he wouldn't be surprised if it was more than most people. He didn't blame you either. It just wasn't the answer, though.

 

But he'd hardly deny you it. He could see you in pain, and still didn't know the reasons for it.

 

"Lets not finish this, you'll get a fuckin' hangover," he said wisely, deciding to keep the bottle and put it out of your reach in his most furthest corner of the cage, making you frown, unless you got up and unlocked it, went in and snatched it back, it was out or reach. He watched you roll your eyes in slight annoyance, and pull the earbud out of your ear, since neither of you were really listening anymore, and switched off the CD player to save battery. You knew he was right, but it still agitated you - but at least your mind wasn't on your headache anymore, and you felt the pleasant buzz wash over you.

 

He watched you stretch lazily over your beanbag chair, fairly obviously buzzed, maybe slightly more than him as you'd drank a lot more, but very much holding yourself together better than he'd seen most people if they drank that much raw alcohol in one sitting.

 

"Wanna tell me why you're upset?" he tried directly, and you shrugged that infuriating shrug of yours.

 

"Not really,"

 

Negan sighed.

 

"Okay, lets try something else, want to tell me why not? What's got you so embarrassed?" he glanced at the bucket in the cell and then at you "I use a fucking bucket to relieve myself and you or Morgan have to clean it, I think we're well past the point where we're embarrassed around each other, don't you? Fuck's sake, I think we're more on the same level than you think, at least, compared to the people outside this room. Yeah?"

 

Well, when he put it like that, you were close in a way that you weren't close with anyone else, even if it was just from being his jailor. He was correct too - so many personal and private lines had been blurred in the process of you taking care of him that embarrassment felt like a far away concept to the man, whose pride would seldom ever let him feel such a thing in the first place. Not too much, not too often, and not too intensely.

 

"You're a boy," you said stubbornly, screwing your eyes shut "-Man," you corrected after a moment of thought "-you don't get what it's like to be a girl, it's not like you'll understand anyway, so what's the point?"

 

Negan did his best not to come across as vaguely insulted, and gently continued to needle you, you'd given him a sliver - and now? He was sinking his teeth in like a dog with a bone, determined not to give it up.

 

"I can try - besides. I was married once, I'm not completely oblivious. I had a bunch of wives after the Collapse too," he said idly, making you bristle in surprise "-I'm smarter than the average bear, I like to think. I could try to understand, you won't really know unless you give me a chance," he gave you a cocksure smile, before attempting to give you a more reassuring look. You didn't know how to take the wives statement, so you compartmentalised it, and pushed it somewhere else, focusing on his smooth features as his dark eyes drank all of you in, pushing you gently to answer.

 

"It's not like I'm going to fuckin' tell anyone and even if I wanted to, how could I? It'd get as far as Morgan, maybe. Besides, I wouldn't - everything you say here, dies here. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," he said dryly, before making a show of crossing his heart in a gesture he was rather too old to be doing, forcing a reluctant smile to ghost itself onto your features, even if it was only for a moment. You leaned forward out of your chair again, pressing your face against the bars as you thought over your answer. He leaned forward slightly - not too forward, or you would actually be touching forehead to forehead with how far back he sat - and how wide the bars were.

 

"And what if...." you felt yourself struggle as it wasn't something you were sure you ever discussed out loud, and it felt like it made it more real if you did it, and not an awful dream you could keep on trying to deny happening to you.

 

"What if I don't want anyone to know and I want it to die with me?" you found yourself whispering, but Negan had an answer for that too.

 

"We both know I'm on borrowed time here, so it'll die with me too,"

 

* * *

 

 It was sudden, and he didn't expect it. It made him feel awkward, and at a loss - and feel slightly bad, for reasons he couldn't quite pinpoint. He watched two tears erupt from your eyes, racing down your cheeks at the same time, like a timed breakdown almost, but that's all there was. Like you'd run out, or you'd expired somehow - and he saw you breath in your belaboured, pained way, chest heaving and pushing lightly against the bars - your fingers wrapped around them too, clenched weakly.

 

"I'm sorry," you said quietly - you just didn't feel ready. Strong enough.  "I just don't think - there's anything you could say that - " you inhaled sharply "-that makes this alright,"

 

Oh God, now the suspense was killing him, but he found himself hypnotised by you, unable to put the breaks on the trainwreck that was you.

 

"And it was disgusting - it _is_ disgusting - and it's sad, and it hurts, and God. Four years, at least. Six now if I've calculated it right - years of this, this horrible..." you rambled, face scrunching into one of utter distaste as you looked at the floor of the cell, your head still pushed up against the bars. "The things I've done, and had done to me - they're so horrible, I can't... I can hardly stomach it, sometimes,"

 

"It's disgusting, I'm disgusting, you have no idea - no clue - I..." you swallowed thickly, squeezing the iron bars, feeling your thoughts get more and more disjointed. Negan could tell if he let you carry on, you might break, so he had to try to keep you on track, though your words hit him hard - the things you'd done and had done to you - you had said once, you were a monster. No better than him, and mentioned casually killing walker children, but that didn't seem like anything to bat an eyelash at - so many you meant something else. It was clear you did. The bayou must have made you do things - and God, he could insinuate you'd been violated before. Maybe even a lot.

 

Sickening, he thought - how this is what humanity is reduced to.

 

"I'm the last person in any position to judge you, you fucking know that. The things I've done - the people I've hurt. You were told. I did it and I didn't lose an inch of sleep, and I kept on doing it,"  he said flatly "-I'd probably still be doing it right now if I was in the position to. So whatever you did or think you did or had done to you, I can handle it, but it looks like you barely can," he said with a small frown. "You talk like you got the weight of the damn world on your shoulders, and that ain't right. I think I can bare it, at least for a while, I'm big enough," he was trying. He really was.

 

He moved closer without much prompting, his forehead almost brushing yours, instead he turned his head slightly, noticing your voice getting quieter and quieter, he put his ear out, so he could hear your strangled, sad little tipsy whispers.

 

"Sorry," you said again. He was sick of you apologising, but he didn't stop you. "I just - I'm just sad, and hormonal. You don't... it's not your job to... listen to my shit,"

 

"I'm offering," said Negan dryly, showing that he was following your strangled whispers.

 

"I think... I think... I have... I can't... sometimes... I remember things, that I don't want to remember. But it's not a memory, it's like a...dream, or a film reel - that I can't stop, and - I was trying in the bathroom to stop it so badly because I wanted to be anywhere except that fucking _place_ and I thought I was back in Louisiana, squatting over a bayou bathroom, crying my fucking eyes out. I thought I h... I thought I heard the other man who practically raised me. I thought... I mean I know it's not real now, but I couldn't... I know Professor Mattius is dead - but I could hear him through the door. I thought I was right back in my memory - it sounds stupid I know. And it doesn't happen a lot - but it happened in the bathroom and I ... just... yeah," you finished lamely.

 

You gave him an answer, clearly not _the_ answer, but an answer - and it was the truth.

 

Negan leaned back and gave you a strange, appraising look, clearly - mentally - something in you had broken. You weren't in a good place, and he knew just from pop psychology what it was, but you being raised in a different sort of world, having absorbed everything you really knew either in the bayou or from books, you didn't have that same pop psychology knowledge, and so he was blunt with it.

 

"That sounds like PTSD," he said bluntly "-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - triggered by.... shit, your period? That's shitty. You gotta deal with that every month," he all but deadpanned, forcing a humourless laugh out of you. He wasn't stupid though, he knew you were avoiding the true answer, but with the secondary one you'd given him, he could see why.

 

"But, y'know, Doctor Negan's office is pretty much open twenty four hours, seven days a week, I'm not goin' anywhere, so... if you want to... let it all out, I'm around," he said with a dry smile "-and while I can't prescribe you shit, I can at least make sure you're not drinking alone. Drinking alone is alcoholism, drinking with company is socialising," he added - with a bit too much cheer, forcing a snort out of you, despite how shitty you felt.

 

"Doctor Negan is a horrible enabler," you said, with an accusing finger, leaning back from the bars and wiping your eyes on the back of your hand.

 

"You know, I was going to make a horrible, dirty fuckin' joke about playing doctor, but in light of the circumstances I'm gonna go ahead and not do that but fully let you know I was thinking about it," he grinned.

 

You laughed. Despite yourself, you laughed - and he felt like he'd done something at least a little good that day.

 

* * *

 

 

 

You offered him another book to pass the time when you said you were probably going to try to sleep before Morgan got back, in truth, it seemed you got more sleep under Negan's watchful eye on the beanbag chair than in your own comfy bed. He didn't protest it, and in fact, silently passed you the ugly zebra-print sheet you'd given him, so you'd have a blanket while you slept. He wasn't much of a books guy - admittedly, but he read some of it at least, until you woke up - and you did, because it seemed you woke up at almost hourly intervals.

 

"I'm more of a movies guy," he said, handing you your copy of Ishmael - it was very interesting, and he had gotten somewhat invested in it, and while he was no English major, the Socratic tones didn't go over his head. He was a smart man, to be sure.

 

"I think I'd like it if you read it to me though, might take your mind off.... everything," he grimaced at how not-so-smooth that was, before continuing.

 

"Besides, you have a good voice for it," he watched as a reluctant amount of redness started to seep up your features. He noticed that he'd made you blush a couple of times, and it was rather easy to make that happen - all you needed was praise even in the most basic form and you would begin to start changing colour. He'd made you blush (understandably) with the toweling-off incident, but he'd also managed to do so in much more benign ways, and had to wonder at the sort of ability he had over you to do so.

 

"Your accent is hot," he added - watching the redness get more and more noticable as he continued, and he was dying to lighten the mood - so he pushed on.

 

"Shut up Negan," you muttered half-heartedly, trying to find the page he dog-eared to mark where he had left off.

 

"And I love how my name sounds in your mouth," he pushed, lips twitching "-It's hot, so you should totally read to me. Spoil me a bit while I'm cooped up in here like a sad bird," - you went a vibrant colour, giving him a skeptical look mixed with abject disbelief, you had it complimented before, but not to this extent.

 

"You arse! You're trying to guilt trip me now," you laughed - because he came at you straight out of left field, and being honest, you needed to laugh today. You felt moody and horrid.

 

"And when you swear you sound like a naughty librarian, so it kinda fits," he teased, making you scoff.

 

"I didn't know naughty librarian's had a particular sound," you retorted, despite your flush.

 

"Well, if they do, they sound like you,"

 

You did your best not to throw the book at his head, instead finding the page, and asking if he was serious - before deciding to plough on with the book regardless. It was one of your favourites, and being honest, it was a long time since you read out loud - and you had someone you could explain (read: bore) about all the nuances to, and he had no way of escaping it! You had a small smile on your face as you began reading it - unknown to you, it had been planned - somewhat. Since Negan didn't know how to make you fully open up yet, he needed to cheer you up to make the air less intense, and he deduced Ishmael was one of your favourite books from how well-read it looked when you first came in with it, and people could talk about their favourite things for ages - often excitedly, and with a smile.

 

So he let you read to him, all of it planned - for the sake of a small smile.

 

Your smile.


	7. I'm Already Dead

 

 

There's something wrong, how could there not be? Of course he didn't know you, and it wasn't his place, but how could he not do something when he saw you jump the Alexandria fence? He watched you, his long legs stalking after you. He had no idea of the kind of danger you were in, perhaps if he did, he might have dragged you back behind the walls of Alexandria. If the wrong person found you - you could be shot through the head, no questions asked. You'd certainly pissed off the right people, and there was just a laundry list of people that would just love to put an end to your life, or worse. There were plenty of things worse than dying, sure.

 

You couldn't sleep.

 

You read Negan your book until he fell asleep, like a child - and when the time came to go to bed yourself, you found yourself feeling remarkably hollow. It was a feeling you dealt with often, but it felt so pronounced today - it was probably the hormones too. Your little episode. Your freakout. Whatever you wanted to call it. Maybe your freakout hadn't stopped. Maybe all Negan did was hit pause, and now you hit play again.

 

You were not a well person, and though Carl Grimes didn't know you very well, he could tell as much just from watching you. There was anger just discharging from your body, anger and something else that he couldn't pinpoint - he watched behind a tree, watching you whistle out for walkers. He noticed you didn't bring your sledgehammer, like you always did when you went outside the walls, nor did you have the pistol you'd been given tucked anywhere around your slimly dressed body. He stood and he watched - your leg, short but tremendously strong, swing easily for the walker's head. He saw the curved blade you had remain sheathed, and the rage course through your body - aimless but deadly. He watched you bring down your boot and stomp it with a kind of sadism that was gratuitous and unnecessary. He wanted to tell you to stop, but he was, in part, mesmerised by the ability to take them down without a weapon. He had seen plenty of people get pinned by walkers before, but he hadn't seen an easy hand to hand takedown. Skill was involved, even if your movements seemed frantic, and frazzled.

 

You found yourself beating in walkers, because it was the only thing you were sure you could do, it was the extent of your control. You could control very little, not even yourself, not even your fucking episodes, and you had to admit, there was something cathartic about seeing a rotter under your foot. He watched you cycling through it - wiping sweat off your face and smearing frustrated tears over yourself as you did, for a moment, he couldn't help but think he was witnessing something very private.

 

"Learn to sneak better, Patches," your voice was cold, and blunt.

 

He flinched, and went very still as you brushed past him, leaving bloody boot print pressed into the soil until you were out of blood to keep on tracking it over the ground. He followed you back to Alexandria silently, like watchdog almost, but you didn't comment on it. What else was there to say? He could tell Rick - he found you going apeshit in the woods, but Rick took you on, warts and all as the saying went, so you found yourself not caring.

 

"Is everything okay with you?" dumb question, Carl thought, clearly it wasn't - it wasn't in general but it was worse after Jackson. You didn't trust anybody in Alexandria anymore, except for maybe Morgan, possibly Tara - and you were avoiding Tara like the plague.

 

"I don't sleep," you said, your voice cold as your feet landed the other side of the gate, you let Carl catch up on his own. You'd hoped to exhaust yourself until you could sleep - you'd been at it for and hour or so, nonstop because you had nothing to punch, nobody to practice on, and you didn't want to train out in the open where maybe the night roaming inner circle of Alexandria could see you, because sometimes, you weren't the only one who couldn't sleep.

 

When it became apparent that you didn't want to talk to him, he left you alone. You looked a right state - if you could have seen yourself in the mirror, you'd have known why your look raised concern - you weren't well. Something wasn't right. Something was broken.

 

_Broken, broken, broken...._

 

That's why you were there, and not in your room.

 

You stood in Jackson's house - and you remember getting angry. You remember destroying his bedroom out of anger - like he was the catalyst for all this, but he wasn't. Maybe in the way shooting the Archduke Ferdinand set off an entire world war, sure, but you'd be a fool to ignore everything that led up to it. Jackson was the symptom of a cancer that had been infecting your life, and it wasn't fair to blame it all on the horror that had taken place in the bayou.

 

Maybe it happened way before that.

 

Like all things, it started in the beginning - way in the beginning, when the poison started to first seep into your life, the curse, whatever you wanted to call it. Some people were just born with bad cards, dealt a shitty hand and had to keep it, that was you for a long time. You had a way out of course, your cousins - the ones muling across Canada to Seattle, they had good lives, fast cars, loose women. They had it all before the collapse, things your family couldn't even dream of. They gave you that kirpan, you remember being tossed it and being told - _hey, I'm the last guy to have anything holy. Don't think the big guy upstairs would approve of the whole, drug trafficking thing, y'know?_

 

They might have been the only good men in your life and then, well, they weren't good men in general were they? Rajesh - your cousin, you were certain he killed people, all those flashy cars. What did any of it mean?  All the people who died for that lifestyle, he might as well be filling his fucking tanker with blood. Gurpal wasn't much better, holy once, not holy anymore - handing you the knife. They were the closest things to good men that you knew of and they had not been good men. Then there was your father - _daddy._

 

God, it sounded pathetic in your head.

 

Single twenty something with daddy issues, still whinging about it in the fucking apocalypse - but maybe that was it. Maybe that's where it started. Maybe all things started right at their roots and for you - that had been him. You tried to think of something that made this make sense, how could you make all of this cruelty make sense? You had to make this string of horrible, unfortunate events that constituted your life up to this point make some goddamn lick of sense but none of it did. The need to make it work clashed with your cynical nihilism of finding it all pointless anyway and it culminated in a flipped table and several photo frames getting slung against the wall with extreme force.

 

_Daddy - Major - Riley - Evelyn - Creed - Jackson_

 

You remember smashing a plate for every name and still not feeling the least bit of release. You didn't sleep. You couldn't sleep. You left the house in your anger, and paced around your own for a while. You found yourself standing in front of familiar iron bars, breathing heavily into the night.

 

Now there was another name for the list, but which one?

 

_Rajesh - Gurpal - Mattius - Sergei  - Cole_

 

The list of good men, or the list of bad ones, you stood over the cage of a deposed warlord, and found yourself giving his sleeping figure an exhausted, bitter smile.

 

Something was definitely broken.

 

* * *

 

 

He heard the noise before he bothered to crack open his eyes, breathing against the cool, stone floor with an ugly zebra printed sheet wrapped around his torso. He thought it might be Morgan rustling around, it wasn't unusual, he didn't have much in the way of privacy. Not anymore. It was an idea Negan was quickly becoming used to - he had slept decently for the while that you had started reading and eventually he had some blissfull moments of pure blackness where he well and truly rested, but he was up now.

 

The smell of blood got under his nose faintly, but not any kind of regular sort of blood - dead blood. He knew it well, it was a smell that impossible not to know it in this world. Even if walkers somehow got into Alexandria, they didn't walk the way the footsteps sounded, and certainly, they didn't close doors behind them.

 

Negan opened his eyes slowly, seeing your blurry figure coming into view, seeing and hearing you slowly dropping to your knees - flesh under your fingernails. Not yours. Not living. He heard your heavy breathing, ragged - like you ran, belaboured, like it was in pain, shaking - like you couldn't hold it in. It was heavy, and intense - like it was filling the room with a dramatic sort of need to force his eyes open and look at you. It was - well, it was the middle of night. He never had watches in the middle of the night - what were you doing here....?

 

"I don't sleep,"

 

Your voice blurted it out, there was no filter anymore, whatever happened between him falling asleep and you leaving, that filter was eroded - not even alcohol managed to do it but apparently the idea of leaving you alone with your thoughts, letting you sleep - it was almost unbearable, and you'd done everything you could to exhaust yourself and it hadn't worked so here you were. The way you spoke, it was shaking, but it wasn't panicked, like how he'd heard you before when you spoke like this. It was...deliberate, and needing.

 

Like he was being confessed to, or something.

 

"I can't sleep."

 

He stared up at you from his folded over jacket, which made for an uncomfortable pillow, but gave him some head elevation, he didn't move from his spot. He slowly blinked the sleep out of his eyes - and took your sharper image in once he could see. More of your hair spilled out of your turban, there was flesh under your nails - he could tell, and blood around your knuckles, probably not yours - it was dead blood.

 

"I haven't slept in at least six years. Not good. Not well. Not properly."

 

You left your CD player in the house, so you didn't even really have the music to blast it out - the things you did to avoid being alone with your thoughts - so many things. This was another thing you were doing, to avoid your thoughts, because you couldn't stand to be alone with them.  Negan was going to ask what you were doing here, but he thought that if he broke your unfiltered moment that it would seal shut, and you'd clamp down like Fort Knox, and he didn't want that.

 

He was fucking intrigued.

 

"Once...when I was younger, I did... I stopped, I stopped bleeding - that is. Down there. I mean. For three months. I stopped and... I didn't know what was happening - I knew something wasn't...right. You know when... something isn't right, and... "

 

He realised now that perhaps you didn't realise he was awake, and that's why you were talking - because you hadn't once looked directly at his face.

 

"I was given something that was supposed to help and I thought - it was medicine - all medicine tastes foul, it's a fact of life. But it smelled like _sulfur_ and there was so much - he put it in a long island glass and poured it down my throat, and when I finished it, he did it again, and again, and again, and God... it had to be a gallon almost. It felt like a gallon. I wanted to be sick. I remember getting up and running to the bathroom, just to get away, and he didn't follow me. The Major. Like he expected it. I was there all night. I passed out. I - "

 

He heard you swallow your bile audibly.

 

"I think I haemorraghed. I know I did - I lost so much - everywhere. I cried, and Prof... Matty, Mattius - he raised me you know - he came barrelling in because he must have spoken to the Major and I remember screaming at him to stay away because it'd hurt him, I knew it would. And it did. I remember him crying, have you ever heard a man cry? It's so rare. Have you ever heard a man crying who raised you? Your father? Someone you looked up to? It's heartbreaking. It's a unique kind of... God. I did that to him,"

 

He felt something in his gut sinking and sinking the moment you spoke, and very slowly, he raised himself up - chains gently clinking as he did so, pushing the sheet down his body so he could stare at you, and know that he knew what you were saying.

 

"I used to vomit every morning, but I stopped after that," you swallowed thickly, and wiped the tears on the back of your bloody hands, spreading some blood under your eyes but managing to look remarkably childish even while washed the horror of your meltdown.

 

"And a week in a month I'm reminded of that I don't think I need to say anything else,"

 

He watched you lean your head into the iron bars, tears starting to streak down both of your cheeks like last time, but again. He found himself in the position he was when you threw your head behind his cell and you threw up down the side of it until you couldn't throw up anymore.

 

Only this time, you were closer, on your knees by the cell, and this time, the paradime was different. His older, larger, stronger hand reached through the bars of the cell - he still had yet to say anything. What could you say to that? You were breaking down though. Properly, this time - and it was probably a long time coming.

 

"I am... very sorry that this happened to you," he swallowed thickly, his hand managing to find its way around your shoulder, and pull you into his broad one through the width of the iron bars. You were still seperated by the safety of them, but for the first time, you were pulled into his body, even if it was through the cage, and for once, you weren't afraid. You would recoil, but you would be lying to yourself if this wasn't exactly what you were looking for. Now, you could have gone to anyone.

 

You could have tried Tara, or spoken to Carl - he was there, he'd followed you, watched your ship slowly sink. He could have tried to understand. He would have at least heard you, but he was younger than you. What did he know about - that sort of thing - ?

 

You could have even tried with Rick, or that woman of his, Michonne, or Morgan - God. You could have even tried Morgan, he had a strange sort of peace about him even if it wavered, and it was tested often, it might have been smarter than this, but you were here. For the second time, your feet carried you here. You'd chosen this - him - the prisoner, your captive, the person that you spent so long staring at through the bars, watching him grimace or barely react as you needled him. Then you'd goad him, and watch the fire light in his eyes as he tried to defend himself, and that you'd tear him down, like a stack of cards.

 

Like he was the Major or something. Like doing this to a deposed leader somehow fixed things for you magically when it didnt.

 

Now you were here - feeling his large, tremendously large bicep through his newly acquired green shirt, the soft material rubbing against your cheek. You were too close, but the bars made it safe - and they were wide enough to allow this, and you needed it. You felt his fingers curling around your shoulder, and if he spoke, you didn't hear him, you were just trying to control yourself. Pick up the pieces - one by one, even if they'd cut you in the process.

 

You hurt this man sometimes, and he deserved to be hurt, but you weren't hurting him because of that, you were doing it for you. Like he was every other man, every other poison in your life - but yet you were here, curling up against his shoulder like a sad, kicked little dog, because you didn't have anything. There was nothing left.

 

"Sorry doesn't fix shit, it never has, it probably never will," you found yourself repeating those words, but they were absent of malice this time, and they weren't filled to the brim with resentment and blame, accusation or it being in any way Negan's fault. Not like it had been when you said it Rick, it instead sounded sad, and helpless, like it was a fact of life but that you wish so hard you could change it, he felt you turn your head and push your nose into his hardened muscle, lips moving against his sleeve, voice cracking.

 

"But God, I wish it did. I _really_ wish it did!" and the way you sounded, so small and so hurt - for a moment, he wished it did too. He didn't even know when he started to care, it was raw intrigue at first, but when you spoke in such a way, he knew what he had to do. When broads started to cry, you comfort them, if you care about them - anyway. Right now his world was only as big as you and Morgan allowed it to be, so in a way, he had to care, finding himself sinking deeper and deeper.

 

You found yourself breathing him in - his musk, his scent - and even from just the shoulder he was _warm -_ and for a moment, just a moment... 

 

It was comfort, and for a second you allowed yourself to enjoy it, before the fakery of it - or maybe just how inappropriate it was, finally hit you. You jerked yourself away from him without any warning, forcing him to release you, your hand flying up to your shoulder, where you had felt his fingers, like you'd suddenly been slapped with the realisation of what you'd done. He looked at you - and to be honest, his expression hadn't changed, it was nonplussed, like you hadn't alarmed him, but there was a deeply disconcerted look deep in his eyes. You just weren't quite good enough at reading it, but it was there.

 

"This was a mistake," you breathed.

 

Too close. You were too close. You were searching for something to make you whole and trying to get it out of this man was probably the worst place to look. His name is going to end up on one of your mental lists and you didn't know if it would be the Good List or the Bad List and right now, you didn't know if you were ready to put the prisoner - to put Negan - on any list. Maybe you were afraid of where the chips will fall. Where he'd end up. History dictated there was no way this would end well. He was a bad man.

 

_You're a bad woman._

 

Negan is a poor decision.

 

_Who says Rick Grimes is a good decision? There's a reason he's not on any list yet._

 

Negan looked at you - he was going to say something, but you were already gathering yourself to leave - he took a chance, and he grabbed your wrist through the bars. Even on one meal a day, he was still strong, enough to keep your knees to the floor as you jerked away from him - or tried to, anyway, looking at him in alarm, confusion and a slew of other feelings he couldn't quite decipher.

 

"Don't run from this, take it from someone twice fucking your age. Don't run from this," he said, his voice, hoarse from sleepiness, but deep and oddly comforting. He loosened his grip as he said it - and watched you ready to flee, only to see you sag, like he'd pulled your batteries out with just a few simple words. You knew if you left the cycle would just repeat, until you dropped to sleep and your body couldn't deal with it more. Thrashing the dead, running until you were sore, flesh under your nails - fuck, you'd already trashed Jackson's house, you were on a path of destruction and the person you were hurting was yourself. It had to stop.

 

"So where do I go? What do I do?" you were whimpering, but he was looking over at your beanbag chair, and leaned up against the bars of the cell, so he was close to you as he could get. "Tell me what to do because I don't know anymore and I've been up all night doing... everything that I do and it's still not enough,"

 

He raised a brow, and supposed that explained the blood under your fingernails, the blood on your face which you'd smeared from your knuckles, the fact you just looked winded and exhausted. You were a woman who was certifiably not okay, and he didn't need a psychology degree to see that.

 

"I think you should stay here and try to sleep Little Lovely. You manage it occasionally, and if you can't stand to be alone with your thoughts - I fucking get that," he gestured to the cell all around him "-I _really_ fucking get that, like you wouldn't fucking believe. Remember, my office hours are twenty-four-seven,"

 

You found yourself sagging in the beanbag chair, wondering how the man always knew what to do. He knew what to do with Jackson, and he knew what to do now, and he always seemed to have the right words. Maybe that's how he ascended to power in the first place.

 

He watched you close your eyes, and your shoulders sag with an invisible sort of weight.

 

"I'm here all week," he said dryly.

 

* * *

 

 

 Morgan asked you why you trashed Jackson's house, apparently, Michelle had heard all of the noise and saw you walking out of it. He glanced at the stains on you, and knew instantly that you'd been outside to let off steam, and had fallen asleep on the beanbag chair, under Negan's watchful eye - said man - now asleep under an ugly zebra sheet.

 

"I'm working through some stuff," you said sharply "-Jackson stuff. Before Jackson stuff," you closed your eyes.

 

"Stuff. It's... I don't - look, I don't have any friends here. It's complicated, and it's hard for me," you said.

 

"You can have friends," said Morgan after a moment of careful deliberation "-you don't have to settle for the company of Negan,"

 

You winced as he called you out on it, but didn't otherwise react. You knew it had been a mistake, but even worse, was the fact you didn't fully regret it. Not properly.

 

"You don't get it," you said after a long moment "-and it pains me to say it," _or does it?_ "-but the prisoner gets it. He's... he's not like you people. He's not good, and - you know, Morgan. I'm not either."

 

He watched you walk away and heading silently for your own house, presumably to shower, get the flesh and the blood off, and go on your designated run with Tara, because you were about ready to stop running.

 

It was time to take an old man's advice, and frankly, you weren't sure you were ready to deal with your shift and see Negan after he caught you in your perpetual turmoil, the changing paradime was too much to deal with - to think about. But Negan? He didn't have much in the way of choices, in his tiny little cell, of which even his pacing back and forth was relatively limited, all he could think about was you, the events of the night, and his only meal of the day. Sad as it was, this is what his life had degenerated to. It was about all he had.

 

He didn't need you to fill in all of the gaps - he thought you a strong woman, who made a fair amount of sacrifices in her time, he just didn't understand how much until now. He was smart enough to fill the rest in on his own, the Major had been the head of your military base. You kept your position of power - and people you cared about, your interests safe, at the cost of yourself, and this man - if you could call him that - had probably spent years _since you were a little girl, **hurting you -**_ to the point of knocking you up.

 

He had you chugging a gallon of poison, and made you miscarry, and it was so painful you barely brought yourself to say it, so you described it, but he had enough knowledge to know what you were inferring, and suddenly, it all fell into place now.

 

Negan felt himself wondering about all the parts he didn't know, and now? The mistrust of Rick and his people, no matter how good they were, it all made sense, and yet, between Rick's people and him, you kept choosing him. Like he was somehow a safer option.

 

He sighed, looking up at the roof of his cell. He could feel himself starting to feel sorry for you, how couldn't he? He wasn't a monster, despite popular belief. There was a persistant, niggling bit of humanity inside of him and he loathed to admit it, but you brought it out. In fact, if he had to say it, you might have even had him wrapped around your little finger, and if you had come into his cell and demanded his embrace - in some topsy turvey world where you were willing to forget who the two of you were - he would have done it in a fraction of a heartbeat.

 

"Guess I'm a sucker for a damsel in distress," he murmured to himself, feeling the shave you'd given him and remembering how delicate you'd been, and the laughs you shared, in that one blissful moment where you entered his space, sheared off the living timeline of his imprisonment and treated him like a goddamn human being. He glanced at the chains on his legs, and he sighed.

 

If you were a damsel, then he made a fucking miserable hero - he could even hear your words, swirling around in his mind and mocking him.

 

_"You made people sacrifice freedom for security, from the sounds of it. You bludgeoned them to death to prove points," you scoffed "Is that what a hero does? Some savior you turned out to be,"_

 

You weren't a little girl who believed in heroes anymore, and struggled sometimes even accepting the goodness of others but tried so hard to find it anyway. That's why you didn't fully believe in Rick Grimes yet, and you didn't believe in anyone - you had no one- maybe that's why you reached out to him? Even if you recoiled instantly, like you'd stepped in fire, and breathed that it was a mistake. You wanted to believe in someone, you needed something, anything, and he stuck his foot in, refusing to let your breakdown drag on any further.

 

If he was going to use you to fill up the end of his days, he could at least spend the end trying to do a good thing, and have some fun himself.

 

_I'm going to try to be her friend. Fuck. I might even have fun doing it. She has this killer fucking smile.  
_

 


	8. Tell Me a Story

 

  
You were thankful that nobody really questioned the trashing of Jackson's house, but if it came time to house someone in it, they did fully expect you to clean it up - which you thought was reasonable. It seemed to be a given that you were entitled to his things too, while nobody actually said it, nobody stopped you - and you caught Michelle smirking when it was obvious you'd helped yourself to some of his things, and had her help you go through them, sharing some of them out.

 

It was at that moment, you picked one of his highly inappropriate and slightly over-large jackets to be one of yours. You filled it out nicely, Michelle said, for something that was clearly not tailored to your short size, you rolled up the sleeves which surpassed your wrists but found your biceps filled the shoulder portion quite well – nice. Very, very nice.

 

“It’s not like he even made use of half of his wardrobe,” you said flatly, but didn’t linger on it, considering your habitual bra-as-a-shirt penchant.

 

“Hey, no criticism off me,” said Michelle with a grin, taking his watch “-you’re a much better neighbour anyway,” she joked.

 

“When I’m not loudly trashing buildings,” you pointed out.

 

“Yeah…”

 

You didn’t know if you and Michelle were friends, but you were definitely friendly acquaintances, nodding at each other from across your yards. For a while, it was like you two were just two regular women, gossiping and picking clothes together. You did your classes, said your helloes and goodbyes, and made a point of trying to seem “business as usual” as much as possible. It was the best way to distract from The Situation.

 

Honestly, you contemplated telling Morgan today that you wouldn’t be doing your shift, but that would just draw unnecessary attention to you and then you’d need to tell them where you were headed. That was the thing about communities, everyone knew everyone’s business and you really didn’t like that. Did you have to clock-in with Grimes or what? You didn’t know. But you knew that it’d be too many days to travel east and get recon on Alpha Centauri to be your backup plan because it was very, very far away and your absence would be noted. Further to that, you were also in danger whenever you were out in the open, you had enemies and few friends. What if you ran into New Frontier, or people loyal to them? What if you ran into someone you pissed off? You tried not to, but the very nature of survival in this new world almost forced you to step on some toes.

 

Selfish girl – your mind scorned, making you do a beeline for the food stores. You could keep doing what you usually do – and run from your problems, but how was that fair? It’s not like Negan had the option of running, he just had to sit there, and think about what you did.

 

Were you seriously just going to use him? Because that’s what you were doing, y’know. Using him, even if he kept saying that he was offering his services, it’s not like he had much of a choice or you’d leave him alone to his thoughts. And – you remembered, you were the best part of his day, he would probably eventually face execution, and you were just going to avoid him. Due to a situation that you had created – because you were too scared to address the perceived awkwardness, and the fact the dynamic had changed irrevocably.

 

And that you had told him one of your special little secrets.

 

You felt sick when you thought about it like that, and you berated yourself utterly for it. So you carried yourself to the Jailhouse, with a hot, steaming tray of food. The day was slightly chillier than usual, as it had been stupidly warm as of late, so the food would probably go down well.

 

You fucking hoped so anyway, you just bit into how much you were allocated to the week unless you found more, solely for your own stocks. Which, you just might – if you found any places to scavenge that weren’t picked through that you could get to and from in a day on foot. Unlikely, so you’d probably need to pilfer a ride and have one ready at an exit point, or something.

 

Sigh.

 

You stood at the doorway to the room, breathing out slowly.

 

There was a choice you could make now.

 

You could try to establish the boundaries again that had been set out way into the beginning, by silently serving him dinner and having a quiet day, where you didn’t speak and ignored him. He’d understand too – last night had been heavy.

 

Or, you could continue to push the envelope, and thank him for what he’d done for you last night. Reading it back to yourself in your mind, this option felt like the most fair, even if you felt like you were chained down with doubt as you put the key into the lock of his cell and opened it slowly.

 

This was the second time you’d gone into it, and the first time you hadn‘t done it out of necessity.

 

He looked at you in surprise, wiping the sleep out of his eyes, before rasping out tiredly.

 

“Has my number finally been called?” he said, his tone was grim, but he couldn’t think of any other reason you would be standing in his cell, wordlessly.

 

“No,” you said shortly, closing the cell door lazily with your foot and nervously making your way into the cell. You looked at the chains around his legs, and the fact that despite his tremendous size, you were easily in better straits physically, and reluctantly relaxed.

 

Besides – he wouldn’t hurt you. You were his one relief.

 

He glanced at what you were holding curiously, a steaming metal container, and watched you stoop to your knees, before whistling in appreciation at your new clothes.

 

“Now, that is a good fuckin’ jacket,” he said appreciatively, making you blush before you could stop it. It suited you, he thought, despite the masculine cut of it – with the muscles and the sports bra, and yes, even the unattractive amount of scars – he could not help but think you definitely pieced yourself together well. “All you need is a good belt,”

 

He grinned as he caught sight of your sleeve – in typical biker fashion, the words _Cunt Slayer_ were emblazoned in sharp, spidery text down the side of your left arm – and he caught something equally lewd on the back, but didn’t get a proper chance to see it yet.

 

“Okay,” you sighed, agreeing with him but mostly trying to steel yourself as you silently pushed the plate across the floor to him, keenly aware you were now in his personal space for no good reason.

 

“I don’t know how to begin with this except to say thank you – about last night, and that, I almost didn’t come today,”

 

He was silent when you said that, silently lifting the tray lid up to see a steaming, hot meal of – he closed his eyes and savoured all the scents.  Onion, fresh herbs – things he hadn’t smelt in a long while in a hot meal. He rarely got his meals steaming hot, and he was thankful for it.

 

“But instead I thought I should come and thank you instead, and stop running from my problems,” he vaguely remembered giving you that advice in his tiredness, and gave you an award-winning smile in response.

 

“I’m glad you came,” looking at the food “Baring gifts,”

 

You shrugged, and brought out your own bowl of food, which, he noticed, was the same as his – meaning you’d probably made it out of your own supplies, or were splicing your own meal, just as you had with the berry stew.

 

“Did you make this? What is it? Smells fuckin’ good,” he said, barely stopping himself from digging in with animal gusto.

 

You shrugged lamely – it wasn’t that impressive, you thought. Back at the bayou you had meat to work with.

 

“Red beans, rice… found some onion and garlic powder, half a bell pepper and leftover celery and some veggies, black pepper…sorry if I made it too salty – a bit of hot sauce. Don’t worry, I made it White Guy Palatable – and I brought more water,” you said quickly. “And that weird butter we get from the Kingdom so – if the rice tastes weird that’ll be why. I um… I figured you could do with the protein,”

 

He noticed his portion was significantly bigger than yours, and wondered briefly if he should feel bad, but all he could feel was grateful and simply put, it smelled delicious.

 

“Don’t worry, I can handle a bit more heat than most,” Negan smirked, before picking the tray up and putting it over his knees. “This smells really fuckin’ good, but, about last night…”

 

You cringed, and felt the natural sense of foreboding at the statement and just stared at your own meal, poking it with a spoon.

 

“I’m sorry,” you blurted “-it was massively inappropriate,”

 

He raised a single brow at you.

 

“You were upset,” he said slowly, and very insistently “-reasonably upset, I’d say. Something shitty happened to you, really bad, and people you should have been able to trust who should frankly fucking know better, hurt you, and you trusted it with me.”

 

You felt yourself wanting to shrink at his words, because he was doing that thing where he was speaking devastatingly true home-truths. It was so intimate and it was making your skin heat up, even worse was the fact you were in his space, and it was just too close.

 

“And you came to me,” he breathed, slowly stirring the food so he could see just how deep the rice went in the bowl.  “In your hour of need,”

 

You resisted the urge to bristle as he called it that, because it wasn’t like it was wrong.  “The fuck am I gonna do, turn you away? Jesus Christ, what do you take me for?”

 

He glanced away from you.

 

“Never mind, don’t answer that. With everything they filled your head with, you haven’t made it a fuckin’ secret. You ain’t wrong either, but fuck… if you can believe it outta me, I wasn’t always this bad of a guy. Believe it or not, I was good once, and I still can be – when it’s needed.”

 

“And you needed it, so I gave it to ya,” he turned to you with his piercing stare and instantly your throat dried up. “I’d give it to ya again, too. If you need. I’m not… you know I won’t hurt you right? I need you to know that I won’t do that,”

 

You silently began eating, you didn’t know what to say to that – he was extending an olive branch – was he trying to be your friend? You knew the gap between your bodies was small, with only your dinners making a space between you, both of you cross-legged.

 

“I believe that,” you said quietly “-I mean, I know it’s in your best interests,” 

 

Negan frowned, you saw his motives for what they were, clearly – but there was something about being written off like that which made him feel wrong, because for a fraction of a moment, he felt devastatingly human last night. There was a moment where there was a thought in his mind that if you’d have asked something of him, and he could do it, he’d have done it in a heartbeat. He wished he could have a way to voice that, which didn’t sound strange, but he didn’t know how.

 

But dammit, he had to say something, anything!

 

“Well, yeah, but I’m also not – fuck’s sake,” he sighed, and spooned himself some food. Fuck – it was nice, really fucking nice, he closed his eyes for a moment and relished in the flavours. It was delicious, and he couldn’t remember when he had a home cooked meal that was made with even a modicum of care. “Look, the way you were yesterday, you could have asked me for anything and I might have fuckin’ done it, because goddamn, you looked so torn up, and shit girl, I’m still human.”

 

Still human – sometimes it was easy to forget when Negan’s identity was blown up to be larger than life, and his list of atrocities made abundantly clear.

 

“What does that even mean?” you said bitterly, moving your food around the plate “-humans are shitty,”

 

Fuck you for making him say it – he cursed internally.

 

“I mean that if I see the only person who treats me halfway decently is crying their eyes out because someone hurt them when they were little, shitting fuck – I –“ he swallowed his food and gave you a hard look, which made you pause with the spoon held to your lips, ready to eat. “I’m going to do something. It wasn’t even much, so does inappropriate even matter? What’s inappropriate was someone doin’ that shit to you to begin with,”

  

You felt your ears heating up and like you should say something, but your heart started to pound and you felt yourself getting dwarfed by the man’s intensity and his insistence.  He was definitely trying to be your friend, but this also felt like he was sliding into Mattius and Sergei’s role – and something else that you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

 

“What I don’t get, is why nobody ironed this shit out for you?”

 

You ate silently, debating how much to tell him, but supposing you more than owed him for last night, decided to speak freely. It was, in its own way, cathartic.

 

“I hid a lot from my mother, I didn’t want to hurt her – or make her feel ashamed of me, or guilty about the things I had to do to look out for us,” you chewed on your lip “She spent her whole life shielding me from my father that I felt like if I could do this for her – I’d be doing a good thing. I don’t think I could stomach the look on her face if she had a proper handle on the kind of things I had to do to keep us afloat. I mean, she had some vague ideas, some things in the bayou were made very public – and the shame of that was enough,” you said quietly, unable to look at the man, finding it suddenly quite difficult to endure whatever his expression would be.

 

“My old man wasn’t a good guy, and he died pretty early on into the shitshow,” you explained, seeing him nod out of your peripheral vision.

 

“I mean, my First Lieutenant said a lot of what I do is a necessary evil, he didn’t like it, but that’s as far as it went, we weren’t…touchy feely in a conventional sense. Professor Mattius was good about… trying not to let me feel bad about the thing between me and the Major, but he died pretty early on during our first and last walker breach,” you said bitterly – feeling the delicious food turn to ash in your mouth at the memory, with a tangible sort of self-directed anger. If you had been a better leader at the time, he’d be alive and there would have been many more saved lives.

 

“So I guess I don’t really have anyone left in the whole world to really… um… iron things out for me, I guess,” you said lamely, finally bringing yourself to see Negan’s expression, which was one of open wonder, and appreciation.

 

“You know, Rick probably would too. He’s not actually a bad person, there's a reason people follow him, and he doesn't have to do the things I've done to keep that respect, so other people must see it too, you probably can trust him, and I would venture you can't fuckin' trust anyone these days, so he really is an exception,”

 

You shrugged.

 

“I know, but, I don’t know, I feel like good people have a certain something in them that prevents them from understanding the depths humanity will sink to until they experience it themselves. I guess even if I felt comfy around Mr Grimes, I don’t know that I’d want to see his face if I told him what I told you. I mean, with you it’s just… I dunno, different. I feel like you’re probably more used to the kind of people I come from, so it makes sense, I guess?”

 

Huh, Negan never thought of it like that.

 

“Well I did pick the meanest, nastiest bastards to be Saviors I could find and housebroke them, so you aren’t wrong I suppose,” though part of him hoped there would be more than just that for you choosing him over Rick. "But we're still a completely different beast to the shitbags you put up with, and there's a bunch of stuff you've said and insinuated that flat wouldn't fucking fly in my compound," he said gruffly. "But I get what you're trying to say,"

 

You decided to be blunt with him, because it seemed to be the best approach, you learned.

 

"You carved a man open and had his guts pool out," you said pointedly, referring to the Alexandrian you'd heard about - what was his name - Spencer? "That alone, I think, is more than Mr Grimes usually is prepared to deal with, you found their threshold and pushed it past the limit, the kind of people I come from, they never had limits to begin with," you paused, swallowing a bit of food and frowning, speaking more to yourself than to him, for a moment.

 

"But at least when you did it, it killed him," you mumbled, making him furrow his brow in curiosity. What did you mean by that? Secondly, you really - did - know everything, even about the people that he assumed were much lower on Rick's totem pole, you actually knew every horrible thing he'd done to them, no detail spared, and to an extent, the Alexandrians that didn't want him dead were honestly too frightened to go anywhere near the jailhouse. Even as a prisoner, he inspired a fantastic amount of fear, so even you just being there demonstrated more strength and tolerance than the average citizen had. Between that, your classes and obvious militia experience, it seemed you perhaps had more clout as a mysterious new entity than even you realised.

 

What fascinated Negan admittedly, was how blasé about it you were, as though opening a man's stomach and having his intestines ooze out was a day in the office, he'd freely admit it was gross, but he'd tripped on the power of it, and it had been fun in its own, sick little way, to be able to flaunt himself and do such grand gestures of terror. It was projected strength, pure and simple, while choking the Alexandrians with his sheer brutality, and a casual reminder to his own people that he could, and would - do far more than a hot iron to the face, or the bludgeon with Lucille. He could, and would - get up, close and personal if the situation deemed it necessary.

 

"What do you mean by that?" he pressed, making you cringe slightly when he called you out on your mumbles.

 

"Forget it, old man. It'll put you off your food, or me at least," and with that, you two ate in complete silence until the plates were cleared.

 

If you thought it could put him off of his food after knowing what he did, he mused that it probably had a good chance of doing so, and didn't push it until you were both finished.

 

* * *

 

 

 So the plates were piled up and you were silently pulling things out of the gym bag through the large, wide bars, putting a fresh pile of crisp, washed clothes - that he noticed were what he came in wearing and what had to be peeled off of his body by the time you actually brought him something fresh to wear. He resisted the urge to pull a face when you folded them neatly and placed them in a pile, before bringing out the biggest thing in your gym bag so far, which was padding it out and making it rather hefty looking. You took off your jacket too - just because it was finally starting to warm up or at the least, your hot meal had managed to make you feel warmer on the outside.

 

You brought a pillow! You'd just taken it off of Jackson's bed, washed the case with the clothes when you couldn't sleep one night, and had it ready, you were about sick of seeing him resting his head on a folded up jacket, it couldn't possibly be comfortable.

 

"Shit, thanks," he said, taking it with both hands - he didn't ask for it, but he noticed you saved his pride a lot of bruising by reading his needs without him having to say them. "You washed my fuckin' clothes too? Shit that's more than all my wives put together did," he laughed, and you just bristled, folding your arms over your chest. 

 

"Well Jackson's closet isn't infinite and I've taken my pick of his stuff," you said, gesturing to the jacket, turning halfway while sat on the floor so he could see the back. He snorted loudly at the patches embroidered on it - with a pair of garish, red bow-lipped feminine lips, and a long, almost snake-like tongue protruding out of it, licking the top row of teeth in an almost seductive nature if not for how cartoonish it was. The words  _Vagitarian_ were emblazoned in a similar script to the words  _Cunt Slayer_ going down your left arm.

 

Jackson was, apparently, quite the piggish sort, but he didn't often wear a great big neon-flashing sign saying it, and he had to say, the jacket was funnier and cuter on your body than on any man's - where it'd just look pig-like, at least, Negan thought so.

 

"Clearly," he said, in dry humour. He glanced at the pillow and slowly extended his right arm towards you, making you go rigid and stare at it, contemplating bringing your own up to block it, and grab his wrist, but he wasn't attacking you, it was a slow and purposeful motion. You found yourself unable to stop it, wanting to know what he was doing, and why he was reaching out for you. You flinched as his large hand settled on your shoulder, where it had been last night - no - higher, his thumb was close to the crook of your neck, and could touch your collarbone in a comfort and a thank you gesture that he thought did not overstep the bounds as you'd done it already.

 

"Seriously, though. Thank you. I know that I don't deserve any of this, and that you might even get in trouble if people knew how kind you were being to me," and that wasn't Negan being modest or humble or anything like that, that was just him being blunt, and truthful. He deserved the worst of what the Alexandrians had to give, but he was selfish and human and didn't want it, even if to suffer would have probably been the right thing to do, so he relished in your kindness. Savoured it. It might be the last good thing he ever had, he knew that much. Even if it was very, very small kindness, compared to his boudoir, his feasts and the legions of people who'd bend the knee to him - but it was important all the same, because it was all he had left now, now all the bullshit had been carved away.

 

"You don't," you said bluntly, not caving to any pity party. "You don't deserve it,"

 

"But that's fine, who decides what anyone deserves?" you shrugged, but even as you did, his hand didn't move, and you did your best to ignore the sensation of his thumb starting to move against your collarbone when you did it - fuck - why was it so intimate? It shouldn't have been, but everything about Negan was larger than life, even in prison like this, it was like you were slowly getting pulled into his atmosphere - what remained of his gravitas, and his hands - were just so fucking  _big_ you just - all over your bicep ---

 

"In this new world, there's no proper justice anyway, no... nothing, I'm not gonna sit here and wax lyrical about morals and ethics. I'll leave that to our books," yes, he noticed you used the term 'our' instead of 'my' - he was latching onto all of the little things.

 

"Maybe for the best," he said - but he didn't move his hands, he could feel the heat rising through your body, under his fingers - and he slowly circled his thumb - ever so slightly, feeling for the bone of your collar and slowly moving his hand down - not too much, but enough to see he was raising goosebumps with shockingly little effort. You could melt - quite easily - under his fingertips, he was sure - he marvelled at this ability that he had to hold all of your attention, and in this moment, you were like a butterfly under a needle.

 

He could see how a horrid lout like Jackson would take advantage of you. 

 

"Looks like you've had your fair round of justice - relax - I'm not doing what you think I'm doing, I just want to have a little look - " he soothed as a sparkle of alarm came into your eyes when he trailed his thumb at the start of a very thin, incredibly faded scar - that was long and purposeful, and clearly one of many. He watched as you craned your head to your other shoulder to allow more room for touch, or perhaps, to get away from the spidery sensation of his hand. 

 

Oh, this is highly inappropriate - too  intimate -  _your hormones are making you freak out, you know he's not going to hurt you, and you DO have an unusual body, with unusual scarring, if anything, this is normal!_

 

Oh yes, that's what you told yourself, besides, it's not like it wasn't nice. It was strange, but the large and rather brutish seeming man was surprisingly gentle.

 

"Yeah, it's - it's a lot, I know. Kind of a gross amount, if I'm honest - and those are just the ones you can see!" you laughed nervously, your stomach slowly starting to knot itself as the man stopped at your sports bra strap, he didn't tug it down - you noticed that, but he did raise it, moving a finger underneath and frowning as he felt your skin become rough, and the deep puncture wound which felt like the skin around it had managed to burn. He was fascinated by the disgusting, he had to admit, but like the incident with Carl, he had enough foresight this time to know that if he went with your jesting tones about the amount of damage your body had sustained, he might actually hurt your feelings.

 

Girls were different, after all.

 

"What happened here? I've been dying to know,"

 

You swallowed thickly - a belt coming into your minds eye and wanted to shrug it off, but between the man's lovely, surprisingly soft touch and the intensity of his stare, you found yourself quite unable to shrug it off like you usually did when the heat got a little intense.

 

"Nothing fascinating. Major's belt and a cigarette burn - but in all fairness, I was doing that teenage rebellion bullshit, and when you command a small army, there's no space for bullshit. I will admit, I had that one coming," you cringed, looking away from him. "For a lot of kids, that used to be going out late, lying and saying you were at a friend's when you were really some place else, sneaking into clubs and all those adult-only places. It's a whole new ball-game after the Collapse though. That kind of rage against the machine will just get you killed," 

 

He saw that you bitterly accepted this as something you had coming to you, and didn't sound nearly so aggrieved by it as you should be. 

 

"I'm lucky in that this was all I got, but I racked up my fair amount of punishments over the years,"

 

Negan wondered what kind of a fucking belt left punctures -  _punctures -_ he thought you'd been whacked with a board that had a loose nail or something, it looked about as deep and piercing as a nail round and clearly you had others, equally spaced, but the healed almost like track marks did, the only one that didn't was the one on your shoulder - and the cigarette thing - he just pictured a large, shadowy man shoving a long, ash-dripping cigarette into the blood-covered hole in your bicep and resisted the urge to scowl.

 

That had to suck.

 

"When I rebelled, I got grounded and had my SNES taken away," he said quietly. You looked at him oddly - mostly because he didn't seem like he'd be the kind of kid to own a SNES - and at this moment, he felt your fingers curling around his wrist- slowly willing his hand off of you - but, you didn't realise until you'd done it - it just further connected your bodies. It did, somehow, make this more intimate. "-And I wasn't allowed to go out and play ball, or do clubs," now that sounded more like him, you thought. "I really don't fuckin' think that I like how your people used to function,"

 

"The world is different now," you said stiffly, slowly pushing his hand off of you, and giving him back his hand, letting go of his wrist as he tucked his hand into his crossed legs and looked inscrutably at you, wishing for a moment that the awkward tension and bodily distance wasn't so fucking tangible. It was going to make this 'friendship' thing pretty fucking hard. He watched you slowly get up, your face in the light, now a strange sort of flush, he watched you gather the plates up and almost scarper out, locking the cell and muttering something about the bathroom, before simply leaving.

 

Negan sighed.

 

He was going to have to convince you into his cage more, he mused.

 

* * *

 

 

You splashed your face with cold water and shook your head violently, rubbing the sensation of his warmth away. That got too personal, too quickly - you put your hand on your shoulder and inched it close to your neck, ghosting over where he'd touched you and swallowed thickly. He didn't even know the ins and outs of the bayou and he was already telling you that he didn't like how they functioned. You were getting close now, you mused - at least, you were opening up. To perhaps, the worst possible option, but still.

 

He didn't even notice you pilfer the alcohol back as you scrambled out. You remember sitting at a fireplace roaring in one of the houses, being pulled in for a slightly more informal meeting - this one was to get people familiar with you, and the places you knew about.

 

You remember sitting in front of the fire and getting the alcohol brought out, with Rick's stare burning into your neck the entire time as you pointed at New Richmond and the areas you knew to be sacked by The New Frontier - they weren't the worst, but they weren't good. You could only really stomach sitting there for so long until you honestly felt like an unwelcome presence, even with Tara sat beside you. It wasn't like when you were out on a run, because you were actively useful, this was almost purely social and you felt a tremendous strain doing it.

 

You were at least, spared anyone bringing up your job watching the prisoner, they mostly spoke about the progress Morgan's students were making since you began training Alexandrian's overall. You considered that you had a choice, between them and Negan, but here, you felt you were faking it to some extent.

 

One look at Rick and you were painfully reminded of Negan's words. If you sat there and you told him everything - and not just the things on the need to know basis - absolutely everything about where you came from, what you'd done and had done, the things that followed you everywhere.

 

Why you didn't fit in Alexandria.

 

You would need to grab Rick alone for that, or perhaps go on a run where it was he, Daryl, Morgan and very few others - the thought made you a little sick to be honest, and there was that niggling fear of rejection, even if you could simply head east to Alpha Centauri, where people didn't know you.

 

But didn't you want people to know you? Know who you are, what you did, and accept you anyway?

 

That's all anyone wanted, to be accepted.

 

If you decided you were going to give Rick Grimes the chance that he asked for, you would have to be fully honest with him. You contemplated practising in front of a mirror, but could not fathom the kind of responses you could get, and then it hit you - there was one place where you could say absolutely anything and your secrets were kept under lock and key - literally - and you would get a human response to it. A human response that could help you gauge how Rick might respond, if he knew the kind of things you had done, and participated in.

 

That's why at night, when you didn't sleep, a loud clang was heard in the Jailhouse, which woke Negan up with a start, making his eyes dart open in the darkness. His heart momentarily was in his throat, because every disturbance had the possibility of his lead to towards death. It was a fear of losing his own life that woke him up like he'd been sprayed with a shower of ice cubes, because that was one thing he truly did fear. Dying. The idea that his number would get called and it'd be well and truly over after an inglorious, undetermined stretch in this cell, in his own filth. What a fucking way to go - he thought darkly.

 

He still couldn't breathe, his chest was tight, and he was slowly peeling the sheet down, blinking the sleep rapidly out of his eyes as he caught flashes of your dark, honey skin glistening under flickers of a tiny, fat little candle beneath your chin.

 

Negan smelt you exhale before he heard it, the alcohol rolling off your breath which was so strong that the flames almost jumped, lighting the rest of you up briefly in the pitch black darkness. It had to be 4AM, or something - but he was again reminded that you didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. Had a lot going on - mentally speaking.

 

He saw the cracks running through the whites of your eyes, red, exhausted cracks, and the soft, dark bags that framed your eyes like a sad, haunted portrait. Negan noticed more of your hair spilling out from your headwrap and going down your naked shoulders, chest heaving against the bars and one hand curled down the thick of it. He noticed your jacket was wrapped around your hips and you were very, very serious. Not upset this time, just serious.

 

He heard the clinking of the cell door open and your footsteps approach as you came in, and if not for the fact he knew you were troubled, and did not sleep well at night, he would think he was in a dream, that he would hoped would at least be a sexy one, there were enough ingredients to make it so, after all. Scantily clad. Night time. Limited talking. Needy movements. Darkness. Forbidden fruits.

 

When you spoke, you gave him goosebumps, and shattered the tired, sleepy, illogical masculine dreaming and assured Negan that he was very much awake. Irritating as it was to be woken up like this too, he couldn't complain, not when he'd extended his talking hours to be 24/7 on more than a single occasion.

 

So here you were, taking him up on it.

 

"I might not be here for very long, because I plan to tell Mr Grimes everything in the morning," your eyes glittered like gemstones in the dark, candle held so closely as you slowly approached and stooped to your knees, crossing your legs and placing the candle between your bodies on the floor.

 

"Everything?" he rumbled out in a tired, hoarse confusion.

 

"Everything about everything and why I do not fit in Alexandria and how he should not expect me too, or even want us to be friends. He should want me as a resource, and nothing more - I do not think I could stomach any more of him and his people trying to reach out to me when they don't know the slightest thing about who I am or what I've done," you breathed. "I am not sure I would be accepted after I do."

 

Negan was silent, trying to boot his mind into gear but nodding anyway, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and then - the part that gave him goosebumps, he didn't know if it was your expression, your breathiness, your words, or your accent or a combination of it all, but he felt himself for once, shivering, and the hairs raising up on his arm - a feeling he didn't get often. Ever, really.

 

"I'm going to tell you about the atrocities I committed in New Orleans."

 

You said, so you'd understand the kind of reaction you might get, and to prepare yourself, because - you admitted - you had never told these stories out loud. They were just things you experienced, often with others, who'd been present at the time, and few words ever needed to be said on the topic. So it was your first time discussing it, and Negan was going to be your practice patsy.

 

"The things that keep me awake at night."

 

So you did. You spoke - he watched you almost disassociate as you did, throwing your back against the wall of his cell and letting more of your dark hair tumble out of your clumsy tignon, pulling out the alcohol he didn't even realise had gone missing to begin with. 

 

You told him a story - in pornographic detail.

 

 

_The moon was full, the stars glistened over the Louisiana bayou, lighting up the dark, black swamps. There were stories - about the people who tried to leave and take supplies out with them in order to survive. The bayou would hunt them down, see, you were welcome to leave. Generally speaking, if you weren't of importance - one less mouth to feed - but the second you left and took something with you? You were hunted out of principle.  The Major would have what few of his dogs hadn't died be led by the Men With Sticks and Ropes - you didn't learn their names in the years you'd been there. Sometimes, called the Dogmen._

 

 _In fact, you could count on one hand the amount of times you'd seen them, and never their faces. They were not people you ever wanted to see, they were the Major's special boys, the ones who did exceptionally well or stuck out to him in a manner that had him pull them out from whatever their jobs were to participate in being his personal hunting hounds. First Lieutenant Sergei Sokolov had the most dealings with them, and very few things on this Earth had ever frightened that man, who lived through two wars and the end of the world and still didn't give a damn that humans moved a wrung lower on the food-chain._ _Even Sergei was anxious around these men.  He knew them to be the strangest of the worst, and strange was often difficult to account for, and Sergei did not gamble on wildcards._

 

_The fire danced in the centre of the judgement ground, a large circle made out of rocks like an impossibly large camp fire. You remembered feeling something strong pulling at the back of your hair, your fingers covered in blood as you looked down at the limp, wide-eyed horror frozen on the face in front of you._

 

_It was Cole. Cole was nice, one of the few nice, good men of the Louisiana bayou - but nice didn't do you well here. Nice would often get you killed, and he was suspected of going back to the French Quarter to dump supplies at a drop point for the rebels from a group called Wintersun that refused to bend the knee to the Major and his wife._

 

_Cole was good. Cole was kind. Cole was the first person to cut you down from the industrial crane when Evelyn left you dangling over the walker pit that hand-pressed bullet shells and chemicals were tested on - and Cole took the punishment that had come with that. Cole was a gentle sort of man with the kindest blue eyes you'd ever seen, but right now they were wide in mute horror, forced open and his body unable to fight, riddled with heart-slowing drugs._

 

_He whimpered, his tongue unable to lift itself to form words when you dug a long, thin, heated carving knife down the flesh of his calves, following a bloody line that had been made by your maroon-covered finger-tips. You felt sick, and you knew Cole wanted to scream, but if you stopped - the man pulling your hair might hurt you worse, and you as Second Lieutenant with a known relationship to Cole had to prove you had nothing to do with this._

 

_You carved him open for Harvest. He was kept alive, wrapped up and taken by a mute Sergei, who was the closest thing to a doctor, and his flesh was thrown onto an open fire, hissing as it hit a metal bowl._

_The smell clung to you forever, and blood ran up to your elbows._

 

_You couldn't bare to look at Cole anymore the day that followed, a bloody sheet over his legs as he was silently pushed by his wife in a rusted wheelchair the next day. Candice hated you. You didn't blame her._

 

You saw Negan's eyes widen noticeably, even in the dark, and him let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, reaching for the alcohol that you had started to nurse, and taking a hard turn with it, putting his lips over the nozzle where yours had been almost moments prior.

 

"Fuck me - did you eat...?"

 

You carried on telling stories.

 

_Her knees buckled and she was looking at you through her blond hair, her hands wrapping around the backs of your muscular calves through your uniform, pushing herself up against your legs like a desperate dog, her eyes watering. You knew what she was doing, she was searching for that woman to woman empathy, searching for the kind of understanding that only came from two people whose suffering was on the same wavelength. Women were chattel and you all knew it, and despite how glamorous your life looked on the outside, they all knew what you had to do to stay there. Some were disgusted, others respected it, and some? Some thought they should be glad someone was thrown like a bone to the Major, because they didn't want it to be them._

 

_"Please, don't take us back, we can leave. We won't go to the French Quarter, I promise,"_

 

_You sighed, and knew for a fact that unless supplies fell out of the sky, they'd be going to their drop point in the French Quarter even if they wouldn't stay there, and the woman found herself looking down the barrel of a Kalashnikov, cringing and mumbling softly in Spanish under her breath._

 

_"You know as well as I that, that is a lie Nina. And I'm sorry, but I have to take you back now."_

 

_"How?! How can you do this to us?! After everything he did, and makes you do! After COLE! I thought he was your friend! I thought you actually cared about us," she choked._

 

_"You don't understand, you'll die out there - and if you wage war, you won't win or I'd be there on your side,"_

 

_"Then die at the foot of the Major's bed, you English whore," she spat out bitterly, letting go of your ankles and putting her hands around her back, assuming the now intimately-known stress position, and letting you quietly carry her back to the swamp. You remember feeling a stab of anger at that - and what she was alluding to - because everyone knew what Chuck did to you, they just didn't say it. Not in such crude of a way, but in her anger, Nina found herself not caring. You remember hitting her ungodly hard with the back of the Kalashnikov, causing her to fall on her knees once more, a genuine anger in your eyes._

 

_"You're lucky I'm not the Dogmen, you bitch. Now get up and start walking."_

 

When he saw you shuddering against the cell bars, and your eyes glistening under candlelight, he hushed you - reaching his hand out for your shoulder as it seemed to now be dubbed a "safe" thing that he was about to do, his mind a whirl with just the few things you'd told him already, a strange, new sort of respect curled up with a feeling of disgust haphazardly directed at the entire survivor population of Louisiana brewing in his gut. He heard you hiccup drunkenly, before slowly leaning into his warmth, like a dog looking for the warmth of its safe space.

 

"That's enough, I think," his voice was deep and heady from being asleep - it was a little bit sexy - if you had to find a word for it, but it was calming, like something solid while the world shook around you. 

 

"'m not a good person," you hiccuped, feeling a drunken haze settling over your mind, and your gut churning as you spoke. "I did bad stuff..." the last word was dragged out until you gasped softly for more air, feeling your cheek connect with something impossibly warm in the dark, making you groan against it in contentment. 

 

"Rick's gonna hate me, I know it 'n he wont want me no more, damaged goods," you continued, feeling a masculine musk getting under your nose and goosebumps raising against your skin, but in pleasurable way - feeling Negan's smooth hands going up and down your shoulder in a comforting, massaging gesture.

 

It took you all of five minutes to realise he'd pulled you into his own shoulder, but more accurately, his tremendously broad chest, which easily dwarfed you. You vaguely recognised this as a continuation of the inappropriate behaviour you two had been exhibiting, but being that Rick might not want you around anymore, and nobody was walking in on you any time soon, and you were drunk - you let it slide, and let yourself relish in the comfort, even if it was fleeting and temporary..

 

"Trouble. Everyone hates... The New Frontier's pissed off... pissed off lotta people tryna get by. Didn't hurt no one. Tried real hard to hurt no one, took what I needed, got hurt anyway," 

 

He ventured you were referring to the garbage people, and your statements were getting more and more desperate and disjointed, he noticed now that the bottle was completely empty, and cursed internally for not drinking more of it himself, just so you'd have more of your faculties.

 

Still, he had to admit - having a girl on his chest was a sensation he really, really missed. It was innocent, in this context - and even when he had it in his boudoir it had been anything but innocent, and there was just something so raw and so human about it, that he was sighing deeply and tucking you into his body, and simply hoping that you wouldn't jump out of your fucking skin when you woke up.

 

Which, Negan mused, was a very real possibility.

 

"'m only good as long as I'm useful and I'll be useful but even if Rick keeps me around, I very much doubt anyone will want to be my friend if they knew how bad I really am. What I'm really like. The things I've done and will do to survive. It's made some people sick before. That's why I left and I travelled alone after that, and I don't bother with that... sit down... make friends... learn names.... they nearly always wish they didn't."

 

Negan thought it was the most innocent thing to ever leave his lips, and for once, there was no underlying manipulation under it either - he told himself - this was just him trying to be good to the one good thing he'll have before he dies.

 

"I'll be your friend."

 

He felt his shirt starting to get wet around his pectorals, and feel your nose starting to poke at his chest, hearing and feeling you inhale against him deeply as your whole body started to tremble and shudder - he dearly hoped you weren't going to cry like you had the last few days. He really wasn't good with crying women.

 

"But I'm disgusting," you cried out, though most of it was muffled in his broad chest, he understood what you said, and found his free arm playing idly - intimately - with the dark bangs which had come loose from your headwrap, marvelling at their softness, and how much he missed the softness of a woman's hair.

 

"It's okay," he sighed, mind flicking back to your blunt words, and an image of Spencer on his knees in his mind's eye, his intestines ready to pour as he glanced down at himself in mute horror, the long, bloody,  _mean_ looking jagged, serrated and blood-coated knife held idly at Negan's side as he grinned at the citizens of Alexandria. All to prove a point. Doing it because he could.

 

"Me too, darlin' - I'm not getting into fuckin' heaven anytime soon neither," he held you and wondered briefly what you would do when you were sober, and just how much you'd remember.

 

Or pretend that you didn't remember.

 


	9. Hitting all the Soft Spots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment <3

 

_Darkness, but not the scary, all-enveloping darkness - and there was steam, or was it smoke? Smoke and steam, salt and ash, the fire around the justice grounds now just flickering embers, the smell of roasted flesh hanging in the air. We had been doing this for years, hundreds of years in fact - so why did it feel so wrong? It was sustenance, or ritual, sometimes even about power - or fetish, but to be pulling bits of humanity out of your teeth, it always felt so terribly awful._

 

You felt a warm sensation down your exposed torso, settling on a benign but to you, highly erogenous sort of area, ticklish, if brushed in the right way - down at your lower-hips, your entire body jerked and you let out a soft, shuddering gasp, tucking into the warmth your face was pressed against. Negan froze, blearily opening his eyes - even with the pillow behind his head, sleeping upright against the bars wasn't the most comfortable thing, and between you falling asleep on him and your body sloping so far to the right that your head nearly fell into his lap, he instead had lifted you while you mumbled half-awake, putting you between his knees so you could rest on him.

 

But mostly so the zebra sheet wouldn't be dragged and stretched, and could go over the both of you with relative ease - it wasn't too bad when your face pressed against his broad chest, but when he moved you, you pressed the entire back of your torso against his, and it took all of his will not to do the natural leg-locking motion that he wanted to do at the sensation of a small, female body against his. He saw that his arms had curled around you on instinct, and that one hand was brushing against your lower left hip, where your combats had dragged down ever so slightly. He frowned sleepily - and wondered if that was enough to give you a seismic tremor against his entire body. Even in your sleep, were you this hair-trigger?

 

_You felt everything around you change, and the sound of a door shutting, and a pair of glowing blue eyes looking at you - a name that wasn't on the list of the good or the bad, because he'd died long before you had a chance to qualify him. You felt his hand on your hips - and his lips curve into a smile, and for a moment it was something else - but you felt those eyes change to more of a sea-like colour, because you knew whose hands it would be and you hated them. Well, perhaps hate wasn't the best word, there were people's hands you hated more but you especially resented Creed's - but it always Creed who touched you like this - except.... except..._

 

Negan frowned, and brushed his hand slightly over the spot - incidentally - he told himself, just to feel you gasp and shudder against him, tilting your neck into your shoulder and exposing the crook of it sensitively, like you were presenting it almost. It was definitely a sensitive spot, he was just trying to figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing without being creepy about it. He found that his other hand was close to your other hip, and tempted himself to try the same spot, opposite. Did it tickle - or did you just get set off by it, after everything that happened - had done - to you? Did it run so deeply that it even affected you in your sleep?

 

He heard you breathe against him softly, alcohol rolling off your tongue when your mouth parted open slightly, only slightly, but the scent was thick, and jolted him from his own sleepy haze into one that was very awake, only to see you had taken the majority of the zebra sheet in your sleep, and were curled against him almost like a little caterpillar. 

 

 _Or something cuter than a caterpillar,_ he mused, he just didn't have the word for it -  _the very drunk caterpillar - now that would make a kid's book worth reading._

 

He dared himself to do it, with the excuse of shifting you slightly without waking you so he could reposition the pillow on his back, neck and head, because for most the part he was sleeping in this horrid position because he didn't want to move you so hard you woke, and this was, admittedly, quite blissful, discomfort from his back aside. Negan was viscerally enjoying the feel of a woman's body on his - and it wasn't necessarily sexual, it was just human, and comforting. You were warm too, and while you weren't a soft person, you were soft in at least a few places that made holding you feel that much nicer.

 

He watched as you gave a hot, breathy gasp - again, reeking of alcohol, and a dark sort of whine leave your throat in reply as your knees twitched noticeably under the sheet in response.

 

_You had control of this - you weren't in the bayou anymore, and it didn't have to be Creed and his savouring hands - you just wanted it to be someone's who wasn't going to hurt you. You often dreamt of savouring hands when you were dealing with the ups and downs - honestly, mostly downs - that came with your hormonal cycle. It was therefore not unusual to feel the hands going down the small of your back - and pick up the natural musk of masculine sweat under your nose._

 

_"You could come with us, we know you could have killed Nina, but you didn't. You're not a monster - there's everything the Major had you do, and then there's you - and the choices you made," the man called himself Nero, but you didn't know his true name or if his parents were arrogant enough to name him after a Roman emperor of such incredible infamy. But fuck, you remembered the leader of Wintersun for what he looked like, he was a gorgeous man, more so than Creed in that aged, refined way, with hair to die for. Long, brown and tied into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, his touch - was like that of a soft, velvet sheet when he brushed it down your arms and moved to your exposed torso._

 

_"He doesn't even know how to touch you, and Creed abandoned you - " you jolted as you felt his hands on your thighs - rubbing those twin, erogenous zones that were always an inexplicable bundle of ticklish nerves that had been passed down from everyone in your family but God - the way he rubbed them with the flat of his thumb, it made you want to laugh and bite your lip at the same time. It didn't even feel so much like a tickle anymore._

 

_"Shit, Nero!" you grabbed his wrists as the hands continued to rub those circles. "-Nero...!" you felt your eyes close shut. This didn't have to make sense. It was your dream, after all - and Nero at least, last you checked, was alive, and had managed to leave the state, so you didn't feel bad fantasising about him in this way. It was a means to an end, an itch to a scratch - a place where you had all the dominion in the world, but you couldn't help but feel the rubbing ministrations of those spots he didn't know about felt so very real. But God, it was your dream, only you'd know to make him do these things._

 

_You could force him to touch himself and it'd be real - or you could make him touch you, and it'd feel even realer. Fucking hell, Nero was wound tighter than a nun but here it didn't matter - because he was getting on his knees and pulling at your zipper with his teeth._

 

Negan's eyes went very wide for a moment, and he found himself biting down on his lip, fighting the smirk threatening to come onto his features. This definitely beat out the snivelling and the crying and whilst you were fully in your rights to, and he'd have kept on holding you if you did, it made him feel a bit hapless, because he felt like he didn't know what to say - or do. There was no way that after how upset you were - you were having one of _those_ kinds of dreams. There was no way you'd be having  _those_ kinds of dreams  _on him -_ but he could feel and see your skin getting warm and flush. That ever so slight parting of your full, bow-lips and the breathy alcoholic pants coming out of your lips - because it was panting now. Not quick, but slow and drawn out.

 

He felt you shudder against him when the innocent movements of just an idle brush of his hands against the parts of your hips that you just left exposed turn into full-on rubbing - besides, it's not like he was grabbing anything or pushing his fingers against your hips - he was just lazily moving the backs of his fingers and knuckles against the sensitive little goldmines and still kept telling himself he wasn't being creepy or obtrusive. It started as an accident - you'd woken him up with your movements when he'd done it in his sleep, and then it was curiosity - and now?

 

 _"Ng...Nero..."_ you moaned softly, and barely noticeably.

 

He frowned - did he hear that correctly - did you just? Holy shit, you were. It was definitely one of those dreams, how it not be? The thought did send a little chill of excitement down his spine, how could it not? But who the fuck was Nero? He could feel a wild stab of curiosity mixed with a bunch of other feelings - mostly guilt - that he should stop facilitating what was happening. Fuck, he might have even instigated it - now that was even more exciting thought, exciting as it was guilt-inducing as the happy-accident was becoming less and less accidental as time went on.

 

He watched as you shifted against him, breathing heavily.

 

_Wasn't it wrong to keep having dreams like this? It was better than Creed, anyway. Nero was older, but not as old as the Major, probably in his late thirties when you met him. Nero, both the man and his namesake were complicated figures in life, but both shared some commonalities - so perhaps the name was a good one. He was extravagant and loved by the public, even if those in power resented him, and attempts on his life were often people in Wintersun being offered incentives by the Major to take care of the rebellion and prevent civil war before it even happened. But right now, Nero - whom you only had a handful of dealings with on a one to one basis was now on his knees, his nose pressing into your thigh, the hip string of your underwear in his teeth as he pulled it down and looked up at you in love and reverence. Two things you'd never got. That's probably why it felt so wrong, it was fake and on some level you knew it, but every few times in the months, your mind would hit you with something like this, reminding you that you were a creature of touch and affection despite everything. That some part of you screamed to be made whole and every time you left a group, you left a little emptier. Sometimes it wasn't Creed, sometimes it was people you'd met along the way, and now? You supposed your mind had given you Nero._

 

How did you go from upset to this? - You were drunk, he remembered, very, very drunk. His eyes glanced to the empty bottle -  _impressively drunk -_ it clearly took a lot to get you to that point. Drunk, young 20-somethings weren't exactly known for their stability, especially mood wise. And you were hormonal, very, very hormonal - he remembered it was bad enough to trigger some horrifying Post-Traumatic Stress fit which - even audio only had been fairly distressing just from the sound of it. But it meant you jumped from mood to mood fairly quickly - he noticed that too, and he knew just from his life - and as a fact - that ladies tended to get a whole lot more sensitive around this time. 

 

_And Nero was about to do quite possibly the most intimate thing one person can do for another, selfless too - in it's sexual intimacy, the complete and dedicated pleasure of the other, with something as sensitive as the mouth, used somewhere so often shunned, abused or riddled with negative associations that he wanted to swipe away in one - sexy little swipe of his tongue._

 

Negan watched as the blanket sank down slightly, and you raised your chest, body wiggling slowly against him in steady compression, almost like you were slowly pushing against something, he let his eyes rove down, the twitch was almost imperceptible, as you were very much asleep, but if not for the fact his hands and arms were draped over your shoulders, holding you loosely, he wouldn't have even noticed if he wasn't so skin to skin. Your hips were twitching almost imperceptibly - but he could feel it. Was it thrusting, or something else....? 

 

 _Okay, now you're just being a dirty old man,_ he chastised himself with what little of his moral fibre was left, brows drawn into a frown. He glanced down at you, having stopped his ministrations - if you could even call a few brushes of the hands that. 

 

 _"....Neeero...."_  that fucking breathy barely-whisper barely-a-mumble it-might-as-well-be-a-moan fucking name again.

 

He felt your spine arch against him and your whole body turn over so that you were leaning on your side against his torso, like he was a mattress - and nearly flinched in surprise as your left hand found it's way onto the flat of his chest - face level with you, your fingers idly clawing down his shirt the way you would typically grab the sheets when you - when you're close - Jesus Christ. There was no way you were doing this - on him - and close, that was too much. Negan sighed, tilting his head back into the pillow and glancing up at the ceiling beseechingly - part of him didn't want to wake you up, but he really probably should, but if he does - then what? 

 

 _Poor thing,_ he mused with a little smirk -  _she's going to be so fucking embarrassed. Fucking hell - she had a crap attack about me holding her shoulder - so this'll be fun._

 

But how could he not tease you about it? It'd be about just revenge for not just unloading on him, which he was fine with, but probably blowing your fucking load on hi--?

 

_Dirty old man. Doing it again. Stop being creepy. You can be an asshole, you can be cruel, but God - draw a fucking line in the sand and don't be a creep - she's had enough of those. You want to be her friend, don't you?_

 

 

 _Yeah. I do -_ so with some awkward shifting, tucking around the belt and doing his best not to wake you in the process, he decided to focus on the things you'd told him before. The distinctly unsexy things so he could focus on anything besides the fact he had an erection like an east coast lighthouse - or it was getting there anyway. Negan was putting all of his thoughts into not letting more of the blood flow south of his belt any more than it already had, which it had, in slight moments when you'd given him chills and he finally knew what was happening - and his mind started putting together the images. Your knees were grinding against each other but other than that, this position felt a little less lewd.

 

 _"Nee...."_ oh, here it fucking goes again, he felt you arching, whimpering - expecting to hear that strange name, only for it to cease being breathy, and come out crackly and tired. "-gan?"

 

It broke him out of his daze - and so you said his name again, seeming slightly winded, but not much, your cheeks a dark flush as you blinked slowly and winced as small amounts of light came into your eyes and the room blurred itself into your view, giving you a headache.

 

 _"Negan?"_

 

You winced and closed your eyes - the dream came to you in chunks, you didn't remember all of it from start to finish, but you didn't have to. You just knew you'd fell asleep on Negan - somehow - and took a wild shit on all of the boundaries and the safe distances you'd put. It started with you throwing out all the rules thinking it'd be your last night, but now, you were rethinking things such as telling Rick everything. You groaned - a much less sexy one at that, and put your hand that was on the flat of Negan's immensely broad chest and placed it on your forehead with a wince.

 

"What happened last night?" you rasped out, slowly peeling yourself off of him and doing a forward strangle, throwing the sheet off and crawling across the floor - giving a fantastic view of your arse as you did it - only for you to grab the shitbucket before he could reply, and proceed to vomit the alcohol and food content you downed yesterday.

 

Negan grimaced - this was the second time he'd seen you be sick, but at least this time it was from something a little more commonplace.

 

"I've had quite a lot of ladies sleep next to me and on me in my time but I have to say, that's the first fuckin' time someone's vomited waking up next to me. Ouch, man. Right in my male ego," he sighed - lapsing into his typical melodrama which seemed the safest way to handle things so you didn't freak out too much.

 

"Actually, you just got very wasted and came into my cell at bumfuck-middle-of-the-night and started telling me you were going to tell Rick about your past but wanted to practice on me first,"

 

"Gotcha," you said between wretches. Yeah. That made more sense - but why were you...? Oh, shit. Yeah. Comfort.

 

"And then you comforted me," you trailed off uncertainly, the vomit certainly killed any waking arousal you had, but you still felt uncomfortably warm and like you really, really needed to shower yourself down.

 

"-and then you fell asleep," Negan supplied, staring at your post-drinking state, some sympathy came to him, and he decided he'd spare you the imminent teasing and questioning, at least, for now - he just decided to watch. He watched you keel over the bucket on all fours, throwing up and letting his eyes linger on your ass while you did - it's not like he had much else to look at, he told himself. You were quick in chucking your guts up at least, before throwing yourself against the bars of the cell and letting the cold metal hit the parts of your back and shoulders that the sports bra didn't cover. It was actually rather soothing, and a break from all the body heat.

 

 He bit down on his lip a bit.

 

"You going to Rick?" yeah, straight to the point. "You said you would, implied more or less first thing."

 

You just groaned in hungover misery, putting your face in both your hands and not replying. Yeah, wasn't that the million dollar question?

 

"I don't know," admittedly the very sexy Nero dream had raised a few feelings you had to pay attention to, you remember having a phase of reading the dream interpretation books Mattius had as light reading, a lot of it had been Freudian psychobabble which you had gotten plenty of from actual psychology textbooks, but it was one thing you learned - beyond how to lucid dream and that was when the mind was trying to send you signs. Often, things you couldn't work through consciously were handled by the subconscious and the bits and pieces we recall in the day time are the bits we can process, and are ready to handle.

 

Generally speaking.

 

"Sleeping on it, I don't know," you said, a strange bitter tinge finding its way into your tone - and with bait dangling like that, he couldn't possibly disregard it, not when he was fighting every urge to tease you at it was, but now you referenced it and he couldn't - not - call you out.

 

Negan just smirked.

 

"Didn't think you got a lot of thinking done during that dream, by the way, who the fuck is Nero?"

 

If you had been drinking, you'd have choked on it - in fact, you managed to choke on your own phlegm and a dawning horror set on you when the words left his lips, instead of dig your head out of your hands, you parted some of your fingers, revealing one eye wide in complete horror. When you didn't say anything after your coughing fit ended and you finally wheezed some clear, non-strained, air back into your lungs, he carried on looking at you rather cockily, grinning.

 

"You talk in your sleep a bit - well, I don't know if I call it  _talking_ so much as  _moaning,"_

 

"Oh my God, shut up!" you hissed through your teeth, feeling your ears burn "-I'm sorry - doing that on you - I just - why didn't you wake me?!"

 

Negan raised a brow.

 

"I already know you don't sleep well, why would I wake you up from an obviously  _very_ fun dream, besides, it's not like I minded," he shrugged, though careful to hide any excitement on his part, he didn't want to freak you out too hard, he wasn't comfortable with how purely ashamed you sounded beyond being the very human and normal level of mortified. It just seemed more intense.

 

"Pervert," you accused - and he resisted the urge to grimace, because it did feel particularly true, especially with the fact he was discreetly hiding a semi in his trousers, which, again, didn't help with the dirty old man feeling.

 

"Maybe," he acquiesced "-but can the sorry shit, I don't care, a cute girl has a wet dream on top of me? How terrible, a heterosexual man's worst fucking nightmare, dear God, the years of therapy I will need for this surely traumatic event," he rolled his eyes and did his best to make it sound casual, and to his credit, it was kind of working. "Relax, it's not any worse than the awkward boner phase I was stuck teaching for several years. This was just - a little closer than normal, but - " he raised his hands up in surrender "-not a huge deal."

 

You sighed, and relaxed, but felt your cheeks burn all the same.

 

"Nero was... just a guy," you said lamely, glancing away from him. "Wintersun rebel leader, very handsome, probably the only Wintersun guy left alive, think he left the state. We um, we weren't anything at all but considering my almost-boyfriend-so-not-sure-if-I-call-him-an-ex-or-not abandoned me to the Major when he said explicitly that he'd come back, if I can control a dream I'd rather not have it be with him, so, I guess I pulled a guy out of a hat," you rolled your eyes in turn, and decided to throw logic at the problem, that usually worked.

 

"I guess we're playing Psychoanalyse My Dream with Dr Negan Freud because I'm way too hungover to make it to the shower yet," you grimaced - being on your period and all, you really needed one, but it would wait until your headache subsided a bit at least.

 

Negan snorted - and decided to cut you some slack, maybe it'd stop the air feeling so weird now.

 

"I'm fine with that," Negan yawned, wiping the sleep out of his eyes. "If Nero was older than thirty than Dr Negan Freud says you have daddy issues,"

 

"Thanks for that diagnosis, but I'm starting to think I should rename you Dr Obvious, this is not news to me," you said dryly, finally bringing your head out of your hands to give him a shattered expression. "Kind of figured that when my dad hung himself from the airport ceiling fan, found out it didn't matter how you turned, cut him loose and killed him with his own whiskey bottle straight to the brain when I was fourteen," you delivered it so deadpan and straight faced that he was hoping it was British humour, but from the look in your eyes - it clearly wasn't, despite the delivery.

 

"Touché," he paused, frowning - shaking off the tiredness as best he could. "You fuckin' brained your dad at fourteen?"

 

"I prefer the term, liberated from his flesh prison," you replied, he couldn't believe you were making light of it - and wondered briefly if you were as fucked up as he was, before you added a quick explanation. "I mean I spent every Christmas writing to Santa wishing he'd kill my dad by parking his sleigh on his face for every time he came home drunk, angry and ready to kick the shit out of everyone and everything - so uh, sorry if I'm not really leaking that daughterly-love."

 

Negan stared, before finding his voice to utter a phrase he was sure he'd said to you at least once before.

 

"Hey darlin', no judgement from me,"

 

* * *

 

 

It seemed like all the conventional, healthy male figures in your life had been horrible and you'd replaced them with a few others, who, in the end of days, sounded excellent - but from a general role model point of view, Negan wasn't sure. He gathered you were raised by a crotchety military-turned-mortuary scientist who sounded the most dad-like and human to him and a salty, old Russian who lived through two wars and defected after the second one to serve under the U.S and just from the way you referred to Sergei as "First Lieutenant," or honoured him in some other form, he gathered you had a very strange upbringing.

 

It sounded more pleasant the one that came before it though, if he was honest.

 

After you showered, you came back down and with your body temperature back to normal thanks to some icy jets of water, you felt much better about sitting in Negan's cell to talk to him, it did feel more interpersonal, especially after what you'd shared. You reasoned there wasn't much going back from that, and to be honest, part of you was thankful that he wasn't shaming you about something which had been mostly uncontrollable on your part, if your dreamself could have remembered where you were, you never would have let it go that far.

 

He didn't even take advantage of you. Most would - but how sad - that, that had become the barometer from which you had come to judge people in the end of days.

 

"Feel better?" Negan offered, only for you to nod once and sit across from him, putting a respectable distance between you two, but not a horrible one - not a wide, gaping chasm that existed prior to this.

 

"So, the dream and telling Rick," he resumed immediately - not missing a beat or smoothly sailing into the topic, making you pull a face and fight the blush. You wondered how bad you'd actually been while laying on him, did you moan very loudly? Did you say any of the dirty things you'd said in your dream? Did you - God - did you writhe? It was all things you wanted to know, but found yourself far too embarrassed to ask, it was hard enough looking Negan in the eyes, to be honest.

 

"If it's one thing I've learned from all of my reading, it's that dreams often manifest things we need to address or work through in some way, our mind isn't clumsy or random, everything works in a particular way and if it seems disjointed it's either malfunctioning or we simply haven't come to understand the thought pattern properly," you said sagely, recanting the books you'd read and admittedly, impressing Negan quite a bit with your self-education.

 

He thought you would have done well in school, maybe even the one he taught at - from the looks of your body after being forcibly trained, you probably could have gone into women's sports. Admittedly, much less people cared about it, but his still offered scholarships in it, with other schools - on a global scale, male and female equal opportunity. It could have been you - he told himself. In any other world, when it all hadn't fallen apart, he could have seen you with a happy future.

 

For some reason, he could even see himself coaching it, even if Lucille still would have died.

 

"And what, you need some good dick or something?" said Negan bluntly, making you blush hard, because admittedly, he struggled to interpret what else a sex dream meant. He was a guy, sex dreams usually were just a loud sign telling him to beat off or get laid, and there wasn't much science to it, at least, he thought. Girls were always more complicated creatures, though - and he definitely wasn't about to admit to finding erogenous zones on the v-lines of your hips because he had no way of explaining how that happy accident happened without actually making himself sound even more creepy and perverted. Great. He sighed.

 

"Um - well, it can mean that, if you want to be um, base and primal about it. But I remember a lot of other things involved in it, it's um... it's complicated. I think girls think different to boys," you said lamely "-there's a lot more emotions involved, even in dreams,"

 

"Hey," said Negan after a moment with a frown "-gotta stick up for my gender here but sometimes we get emotions with our boners too y'know," and Christ, he couldn't believe he was talking about this, but it was at this moment the fact he was at least a (semi-mature) adult came into play and he was able to discuss it without lapsing into giggles or treating it like it was a massive joke, even if his phrasing made it seem that way sometimes.

 

You scoffed and almost asked him when the last time he had a wet dream with any emotions in it occurred, but decided that was already far too personal and the only reason you were discussing yours was because he'd become an unwitting passenger during your little ride on dream-Nero's face. Simple as that.

 

"Okay sure, but conventionally no, because guys statistically have these dreams less and usually only with hormonal build-up and pent up..." you trailed off, coughing awkwardly "-well, I don't need to explain that to you,"

 

Yeah, thought Negan grimly - kind of dealing with that right now, funnily enough - but he didn't voice it, just nodding with a small smirk.

 

"When girls have them there is a lot more factors involved, I mean yeah hormones and things, but other stuff. Mostly - if I tell Rick, what happened with me and Wintersun might happen again," you sighed, and at his clueless look, it was time to spill the beans.

 

"I was leading a hunting party for the Wintersun rebels when the Dogmen - uh - Major's guys with hunting hounds - they couldn't find the guys. They lost the trail and I tracked them back to New Orleans in an area not far from the French Quarter, their old base. We had rebels from people who refused to bend to the Major and more who didn't want to leave the Quarter or heard what he was like and had no interest in going there. Women especially," you added.

 

"Nero knew what I had to do to maintain that position and he made me an offer to smuggle me out of New Orleans if I was able to get him a weapon's cache and to come and start over with the rebels of Wintersun, but I ended up turning them in, because even if I got the cache, they didn't have the numbers, and I couldn't start a civil war, people would die. And yeah, I was a coward. So I led them back at the end of a kalishnakov but Nero managed to escape. I think he went upstate but I'll never know," you shrugged.

 

Negan let out a long sigh - what a shitshow, so you had a chance to escape the horrid place and even with it dangled in front of you, knew it to be so pointless from a pragmatic standpoint that you didn't even fight, you just caved in and handed them over.

 

How sad.

 

"So what does this have to do with the very sexy dream?" he said - he kind of wanted you to spell it out for him, because he was struggling here, you were giving him puzzle pieces but none of them felt like they were fitting right.

 

"Well I think Nero is just a placeholder - I mean, in my dream he was making me an offer, and th-- well, yeah," you said quickly, not wanting to have to describe it or you might die of embarrassment if you do. "-and I remember days of thinking how much I regretted not trying to escape with him because even if Wintersun got annihilated or captured, Nero still escaped and there was a chance I could have too. It left me feeling kind of empty, and to be honest, it's not always Nero,"

 

Negan raised a brow - so you had these kinds of dreams often it seemed, and you dropped the insinuation without even really thinking about it, trying to follow a train of thought out loud instead.

 

"Sometimes it's people I've met while travelling on my own, people I tried to be friends with and tell about...the bayou stuff. People who gave me an out, only to take it away and for me to feel empty and hopeless after, because they'd always leave after, and I'd be on my own, and then I'd wake up - if I get that far," you blushed. "So I guess some part of me really.... really, really, really wants to be with people," you mumbled.

 

"I'm only human, after all."

 

"But - " Negan finally could follow what you were getting at "-if you do, it usually goes bad on you sometime after you reveal everything about who you are and what you do, right?" 

 

"Right,"

 

"And this conveniently pops up after you decide to get drunk and tell Rick everything so you could try to fit in here," it dawned on him, and you nodded. "So don't," he shrugged.

 

Don't.

 

Lie by omission. 

 

Don't be forthright.

 

Just don't.

 

"What do you mean, don't?" you said with a frown "I feel like an imposter, like I'm faking being a nice, good person if I don't, and feeling alone around rotters is one thing, but feeling alone but being surrounded by people is so much worse," you breathed.

 

Negan just smiled - but this time it seemed a bit worn out.

 

"Don't I know it," he sighed, referencing his prison stint, you almost cringed - you hadn't even thought about that when you said it. Of course Negan understood, he might be the most understanding survivor out of everyone here if you were brutally fucking honest.

 

"Do Rick and his people tell you everything? Bout their past, how they came to be? Probably not, unless it's relevant, 'cos they aren't burdened by their guilt that they're somehow bad people. They don't think about it, it explains a lot, don't you think?" he rattled his chains for effect and you nodded. 

 

"But you - you  _do_ feel guilty, you have hangups and shit," said Negan lazily "-my advice? Don't tell him. Not unless you want to, the time is right, or it feels poignant. All they need you to do is be good for the group and good for them, not Mother fucking Theresa. Don't get me wrong honey you've done some....done some real shit," he laughed "-tip of the iceberg, I bet even. And I look forward to hearing about it - because you fucking fascinate me, but do you owe it to them? To any of them? Not fucking really. You said you were doing fine on your own and would do fine after, so what really do you owe them beyond pulling your weight?"

 

You went silent, only for him to sigh and shake his head - at least his years on you were coming into play, he could give you good advice, at least. Or what he hoped was good advice.

 

"Maybe," he said slowly "If this is a pattern you keep seeing, of people unable to accept your fucking shitshow past, is you putting it into your present. Maybe you should let yourself start fresh, and leave the past where it is, I get that..." he trailed off, recalling your distressing bathroom incident "-that it's uniquely horrifying. I mean, you still haven't told me every little detail but I'm not a retard. Just the marks on you can I see and the things you've shared with me so far, I bet it really is it's own class of shit. The shittiest shit. The world's shittest fucking sequence of events worthy of a goddamn shit museum - and that's why your mind cant just let it go. That's the... that's like when stuff like what happened in the bathroom occurs and you can't fucking stop it. That's PTSD - there's already something you can't control, you don't need to insert your past into parts that you  _can_ control."

 

Well, you didn't expect that.

 

"So maybe, don't tell Rick unless you want to, and you get to that kind of level with him or his people. But fucking hell, I don't know that you even give yourself a fighting chance to try to be happy," he meant your nihilism when he said it too, and you felt it, feeling goosebumps raise on your arms.

 

His voice lowered a wrung unexpectedly, and it sounded almost soft now.

 

"I mean, shit, you can tell me, is that enough? I meant what I said last night. I want to be your friend."

 

* * *

 

 

 You found yourself hungry to talk to him more after getting breakfast for the pair of you and breaking his one-meal-a-day rule by having a healthy serving of fruit and nuts, mixed with water. Not exactly the best breakfast, but extremely healthy at the least. He noticed you practically set up camp in the room - leaving him with your CDs and CD Player to keep him entertained, some books, a blank book, pens and pencils - everything in your gym bag for the day, within reach through the bars, he noticed.

 

You left him immediately after breakfast for the morning training session, warming up the Alexandrians by having them jog behind you in unison the entire circumference of the settlement before divvying up the hours between hand to hand and knifework. Rick was happy with it at least, because the amount of people he could risk on runs and trust to be less likely to die increased by the day and it seemed that you ran an impeccably tight ship. 

 

Morgan was concerned that you were spending perhaps too much time with Negan but he would be lying to Rick if he said he didn't notice a visible improvement in the pair of you. For Negan, it meant he finally seemed more in touch with humanity and like he was actually thinking about all the reasons he was imprisoned at all, and for you - you finally had someone to talk to, and were resting better. He noticed you had significantly more energy than usual just from the amount of zeal you had taught the Alexandrian's with.

 

It seemed Rick was content to have this be your main and only function so far, because it was probably the most important, and shouting orders suited you much better than you awkwardly trying to make friends here. You tried that with Jackson - and look at how that turned out.

 

Two hours at dawn and two hours before the informal curfew - that was four hours of training a day but you made them count, it wasn't uncommon for Alexandrians to be sore, and sometimes not come for training the next day from delayed onset muscle soreness, but you would tell them it would hurt longer if they did that, the best thing, you found, was to plough through the pain, your body would simply adapt.

 

"Adapt and change," - that was your motto when it came to training.

 

Eugene at least didn't feel like such a loner at community meetings because he found himself standing beside you, opposite of Tara, and though you and Eugene still didn't really talk much, it was clear that your intellectual pursuits often aligned so it wasn't uncommon to see you exchanging books - with both of you working things like repairs, though with you, admittedly, doing much better in that regard.

 

You had your uses - most of them, Rick noted, highly unsociable ones. He found himself talking to his son about you once, and Carl revealed what he saw in the wilds, even though he usually probably would not, if his father was concerned then he'd at least share what little he knew.

 

Rick frowned - he would probably have to make sure that at least Morgan kept an eye on your mental health, it seemed that in the zeal of you being able to properly, formerly train his men, he'd forgotten something as rudimentary as that.

 

You were, after all, barely an adult.

 

What Rick Grimes couldn't account for, and would never have truly seen coming - though perhaps Morgan did - was that the prisoner would become your source of stable adult confirmation. That Negan of all people would be the one that ironed things out for you that you didn't understand while you had been growing up as brutally as you had. Especially with the fact you had been so independent and came across as stubbornly your own woman, it would be very unlikely that sans Rick, much of the group would have much of an instinctual urge to gently steer you the right way.

 

Negan barely understood how he'd come to fill this role, but apparently even the sociopath had a better understanding of human relationships than even you did, and what you should come to expect from humanity - because - he reminded himself - he got to grow up in the Old World.

 

You barely had a fucking shot.

 

He watched in surprise as you came into his cell again with a bottle of water, dabbing your forehead clean of sweat and sitting across from him after cleaning the bucket out of vomit and unsavoury things, it seemed that you didn't go backwards, but left the beanbag chair where it was, so you could be in at least mutual discomfort or - equal grounds - and if Morgan came in, you could probably come up with some sort of excuse. Putting the beanbag chair in however would just scream that you made yourself at home in his cell and stamp "inappropriate behaviour" clear on your fucking forehead, so you simply did not.

 

You talked a while about training, and Negan found himself envying it, while he wasn't one for orders, he did miss being able to keep himself in top form, and being able to run without chains - he supposed. He found himself letting out a long sigh as you spoke, glowing with praise about an Alexandrian by the name of Lawrence.

 

"You'd have done really well in college," he said quietly, and unexpectedly, making you blink owlishly.

 

"Where did that come from?"

 

Negan shrugged, glancing away from you and idly picking dirt out from under his fingernails - he'd need another catlick soon, he realised - more wet towel treatment, the amount of grime you could gather just sitting in one place for so long was strange, but he missed feeling clean each day, he didn't like feeling like he was in a state of intermediate grime all the time, just waiting it to turn severe before he could wipe it down off of himself. Even his beard was slowly growing back, he could feel the rough stubble coming along slowly, but his face still looked clean enough - at least, for now.

 

He turned to the book pile and saw a few he recognised off old college reading lists, popular ones, most he hadn't read or knew from others that took classes that forced them to read that shit. Ishmael was quite wordy as it was, with big concepts - he hadn't heard of it before you presented it to him - but in the gym bag he could see more recognisable ones. He saw anthropology books, scientific books, engineering, fiction, history - hell he even saw  _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ in there which he was pretty sure he vaguely recognised as Nietzsche. It seemed you made a good use of the books recovered, as it was now a primary source of entertainment and Professor Mattius burned into you the importance of the breakthroughs of the Old World and not to forget.

 

In fact, his words actually mirrored Negan's.

 

_We mustn't go backwards._

 

 _"_ You're very much a smartypants, ain't cha?" he said rhetorically, some of those books looked undergraduate, and some of the science ones even looked like they might be postgrad.  "College was made for people like you, I think you woulda liked it," he said softly.

 

You looked at him oddly - wondering what brought this softness about.

 

"I went to college," said Negan conversationally, closing his eyes "Seems like a fucking lifetime ago - even graduated,"

 

Now that was surprising, even though you knew this, it was still surprising every time you heard it, because the idea of Negan playing to any authority didn't sit right with you, you just couldn't see him working under anybody who wasn't himself - the idea of acquiescing and accepting people over himself in terms of intelligence and power, it just didn't seem to be Negan's gambit and so again, he just continued to surprise you.

 

 "I did okay in school," you offered quietly "I mean, it wasn't a good school - not at all - and everyone had a fight, even the small nerdy kids eventually got involved in something even if they were just on the receiving end, it was rough, but I did really well. When I bothered to go, I just kinda showed up for the tests but skipped as much as I could until we got a court summons forcing me to go or try to pay a fine my parents couldn't afford, or go to a detention centre,"

 

"Like, juvie?" said Negan with a frown - you really didn't seem like the juvie type.

 

"Yeah."

 

The man gave you a long and critical look, and found himself repeating his own words, breathing all of you in despite the distance from which you sat.

 

"You fucking fascinate me," he said flatly. He didn't know if it was because it was that you actually spoke to him or that you were just so very different in general, but maybe in another situation, he would have the exact same sort of feelings about you - like if you rocked up into his camp at the height of his power. He couldn't see himself just being able to dismiss or ignore you - everything about you was so painfully different and unique that he found himself fascinated by everything that had gone into making you what you were. A unique creature of the apocalypse.

 

"Every time I think I have you pinned down, something else comes out the woodwork and I realise I know fuck all about you," he leaned forward a little, giving you all of his attention. 

 

"Tell me about school. British school."

 

You gave him a flabbergasted look - was he really that bored and didn't feel like reading or being read to? That he wanted to actually talk about you? What was his endgame here? Men like him always had an endgame but for the life of you, you just couldn't figure out what possibly he gained from inane chatter about your brief years in secondary school back home. You almost did ask him why, but figured you two needed to pass the time anyway and after his bold declaration that he wanted to be your friend, maybe this was just an honest attempt at that? Maybe he wanted one friend before he died.

 

You could understand that, you supposed - and maybe some part of you felt humbled that you ended up being chosen for this, because playing such a large role in anybody's life was some kind of an honour, it meant something. It was why you kept coming back, or one reason you did, anyway.

 

"Uhm," you said in an unsure tone, clearly reflecting your confusion at the man's sudden softness and interest in your past, only to be given an encouraging smile that you couldn't linger on too long, looking him in the face was still a little hard.

 

"High school in England was kind of more like your guys' middle school, I think? Don't quote me on that," you groaned, yeah, you weren't going to do the math. "Pretty much everyone who didn't jump the fence to get fastfood at lunch because they were poor stayed inside and most of all of us had free school meals on the government anyways. Not that it mattered, two thirds of the menu on any given day could make you throw your guts up," you said.

 

Weird, the first thing you remembered about high school was the shitty food, at Negan's actually interested expression, you continued, brows still furrowed in confusion as to why this was the topic of conversation. "I was one of the poor kids, but like, I dunno, somehow I was lower than all of them on the pole. They got new school uniforms - yeah all schools had those by the way, public ones too - every year, I was always stuck with the same one, repairing it to death," you rolled your eyes again. 

 

"Theory was that nobody got bullied for not being able to afford nice things and to prepare us for the workplace, fat lot of good it did in the area with the highest unemployment in the fucking Midlands," you laughed, somewhat bitterly "-kids just find more inventive ways to bully. I didn't get a new uniform until the fucking arms and legs got too short, I got picked on for it, and for my higher reading level, I wasn't exactly swimming with friends,"

 

"Don't feel too bad for me or nothing, everyone had it shit, even the popular kids probably," you shrugged "-like Em and stuff,"

 

"Em?" he pushed, showing he was paying attention, making you sigh. God, how did you still remember all that spiteful bullshit like it was just yesterday, even though decades of far more horrifying things happened for far longer, way later?

 

"They used to call her Overdose-Emily," you mumbled. "Three guesses how she ended up, her whole thing was drinking until she blacked out, nobody commented on it until she started having nosebleeds in class and people kept saying they saw her out at night with way older guys. We figured she was doing blow or something to keep on haemorrhaging like that, anyways, yeah. She went to hospital for a year after she came into school and her skin went fucking yellow like she had jaundice or something, her liver was ready to fucking go and after she comes back, everybody calls her 'Overdose-Emily' until she leaves school, she was a year above me so not much older - sixteen maybe?" 

 

You tucked your chin into your knees as you raised your legs up and looked at him with a far-off expression, because you couldn't remember the last time you dredged this ancient shit up, you didn't even know how much detail Mattius went for, it had been so fucking long ago.

 

"Fucking hell," Negan said dryly, in comparison, his rather mundane life seemed luxurious. "I went to a rural school. Decent enough, average in most things, above in one or two, mostly focused on sports," 

 

"Country boy?" you said sceptically, making him shrug.

 

"Moved a lot, so not really, my father kept getting stationed to new places, didn't see him much. Marines, if you're curious," he said - he didn't think about his father much, because he couldn't say that he saw the man much, he was always working. He knew he inherited his build off of the man though, and his temper, but he couldn't say his childhood was that bad, especially compared to yours, he never really considered it - but he was lucky in just the fact he'd been middle-class as hell. He was keenly aware he was hearing what it was like for the British underclass and it was like a cold blast of water, like something he'd see in movies if he was honest, only, usually the no-hopers had a happy ending. You reminded him this wasn't the case, such as with Overdose-Emily.

 

"What do you really wanna know about school?" you said curiously, still frowning. "I don't have much to tell you, except I had decent teachers who desperately wanted better for me, I miss them sometimes."

 

Negan sighed, he was rather hoping these memories might be less depressing for you, but it seemed this wasn't the case.

 

"Shit, kid - like, I dunno, one happy memory from before the Collapse? I feel like everything I learn about you is just a fucking Greek tragedy that doesn't have an ending yet," he said with a grimace. You were surprised at his wording, though, you supposed, it made sense in a lot of ways.

 

You closed your eyes.

 

Did you actually have any happy memories? There had to be some, somewhere...somewhere  _deep._

 

"Look you gotta understand Negan, like, the place I come from - before the Collapse - parents didn't hope that their kids would grow up to be doctors or lawyers, they hoped that their kids would live to grow up  _at all._ I don't have that many happy memories, unless you count my cousins who emigrated to Canada, the only reason they even had the rich lifestyle was because they joined the cartels. I think that was probably where my future was, cos I didn't want to die in the fucking concrete jungle,"

 

He looked at you blankly when you said that, he understood most of it until the end - and your lips twitched as you described home. It was hell, but it had also been home.

 

"The Concrete Jungle was what we called the industrial bit which got destroyed during a mass riot we had over some of our area's prominent drug barons getting shot when our police were finally allowed to be armed. Not as heavy handed as your lot, I think, but it caused a shitstorm and we were the epicentre of it," you said shortly. "The borough didn't have much funding, so only a few mandatory sort of buildings like the YMCA and stuff got restored, the rest all got sealed off. It's also the way I had to go to get to and from school so..." you trailed off.  "All the shit that ever went down kinda happened there,"

 

"Jesus, there goes my image of ya'll as pip, pip cheerio and bowler hats," said Negan dryly "-sounds about as bad as Chicago was,"

 

"Fuck off, just replace guns with knives, though we did have a few illegal handguns floating about," you laughed - a little less bitterly now "-you only had to go up North and you'd start getting the pompous Oxbridge-Bullingdon club twats, that's the thing about England, you don't have to go far to be somewhere else, but most of us still live and die in the same place. The only reason I even had the money to get to the States to begin with was because of what the cartel cousins left us, they were the fun guys," you sighed. "I wanted their life,"

 

"Come on, happy memory - there has to be one," Negan pushed - because now it was just sounding more and more like there might not actually be any, and for all of the sociopath's issues, he at least had memories, did you even have that?

 

You closed your eyes, and you searched, deeply.

 

"My mother used to take me to Sikh temple to learn Gatka and she would have nice chats with the mothers there, and after, if she had enough money squirrelled away she'd take me to the one of the last physical record shops that I know that sold vinyls and not CDs, and she'd show me what she grew up with when her parents migrated to England and started getting stuck into the culture," you smiled wistfully.

 

"Is that why you listen to a lot of old stuff?" Negan jumped on that - before gesturing to your CD player.  "I noticed you listen to Warren Zevon the most, so..."

 

Wow, you thought - he actually fucking noticed that?

 

"Yeah," you said quietly "-mum was a Warren Zevon type, but I was more of a There Might Be Giants and Led Zepplin type,"

 

Negan actually perked up at that - now there was a name he hadn't heard in a while, he whistled deeply and appreciatively.

 

"Good girl," making you flush for reasons unclear to you - it was just the way he said it that sounded a bit more suggestive than when others had said it to - like Sergei or Mattius - you felt yourself blushing and found yourself listing off more bands, looking for that sparkle of recognition in his eyes - because something about it made your heart flutter from the approval - reminding you of when your mother praised your choices when you'd pick records in the store.

 

"Judas Priest too - British Steel was my favourite album of theirs, always found AC/DC a bit samey but liked them," you added.

 

"Heresy, but I see your point," Negan smiled "I had an AC/DC phase growing up, actually. Drove my father around the fucking bend and back,"

 

It was strange hearing Negan talk about himself as a child, you found yourself wondering what he looked like growing up - because he was an exceedingly handsome older gentleman, in your opinion, but you couldn't really imagine him any younger than he was, but doubting he had any pictures recoverable in any place, there was no point in asking.

 

"Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac," you said, making Negan do an iffy sort of gesture with his hand - it hadn't quite been his thing - but he remembered them. "Grateful Dead?"

 

"Fuck yes, Grateful Dead," Negan grinned, finding you getting a bit cuter by the second the more excited you got listing bands you liked pre-Collapse just to see him light up when he remembered them "-Johnny Rotten?"

 

"Sex Pistols guy? Yeah," you said with a frown "I think he did other stuff too. Don't remember though. Def Leppard?" only for Negan to nod with more enthusiasm - he remembered having those in his collection when he was a teenager.

 

"Shit, yeah, I had those in my collection as a kid," he chuckled "-and fuck, Van Halen - God I ain't thought about that shit in forever,"

 

"He had good guitar solos," you said, scratching the back of your neck as you remembered, and for Negan to find himself in memories that even predated his adult life, for the first time in so very long, he supposed that'd be what happened when he reminisced with someone as young as you.

 

"He did," Negan said after a moment, and a silence falling between you two, before he asked if that was your only real happy memory, and you shrugged.

 

"I mean, there was the guy who ran the Smoothie Shack outside The Concrete Jungle - he um, he used to let me pet his dog when I got off school and when I saw him in the morning. It was a rottweiler," you said quietly, blushing as you looked away - God - how pathetic that it was what classed a happy memory?

 

Negan realised he was embarrassing you, and did his best to give you an encouraging smile.

 

"Petting dogs, that's sweet," he said after a moment - but it was true, it was a pretty pathetic happy memory.

 

"In summer he let me walk him while he was at work and he'd pay me in smoothies and I thought it was the best thing ever, sometimes he'd just let me in anyway, I used to sit in there a lot, I think he knew I didn't have any friends, but he never asked me where they were. He'd always just ask me how my work is coming along, everyone knew who my dad was you see. Everyone always knows the local wino, so - I mean, I guess some of it was that he felt bad for me, but Mr Stevens was always really nice," you looked at him, and for a moment, he was struck by how soft and vulnerable you could look in a second, despite your muscle, your strength, and your power.

 

"I miss when people were nice," you said quietly, before he saw your stare harden, and look up at the ceiling, and God - he wished it wasn't like that for you. For a moment, he could feel his most human side just  _scream_ internally for reasons he barely understood. It wasn't a side he paid attention to very often, but in the cell, he was rather forced to.

 

"Maybe people never were. I'm pretty sure Mr Stevens just wanted to see what tweens tasted like," your tone turned dark, and just like that, the happiness died - and he felt something in his gut start to tear, he didn't know what it was, but suddenly, he felt even worse about his earlier creeping - even though you were just - God - intoxicating, in your own little way, he vowed to not be a Mr Stevens - or anything like the others. Not while he was alive. If he wanted you and - to be honest - Negan wasn't sure if he did or if he was just stir crazy - he would make you want him in return, and nothing would be taken from you. Not anymore.

 

Negan cleared his throat, trying to pierce the decidedly grim atmosphere that came with asking you about your past.

 

"You're allowed to bother me back, I ain't goin' nowhere," maybe that would be better, his was significantly less depressing, not all roses, but much less depressing.

 

You decided that you would play to your own curiosity, especially feeling rather vulnerable with how much you disclosed and did in front of him, but how little he had done in return.

 

"You said you owned a SNES?" you offered by way of a conversation starter, making him chuckle.

 

"I wasted most of my childhood on Super Metroid during all the times my old man moved, I usually made friends - well - more like cronies - out of neighbour kids and stuff. Just 'cos they were there really," he shrugged, in truth, he discovered social manipulation at a very early age and used it to his advantage to appear personable and popular, but he didn't recall really having friends he did things with like trust with secrets or rely on profoundly, he always had a wild streak of independence. 

 

"I was a jock, if that surprises you at all," he added wryly - making you snort. "And I majored in Physical Ed with a minor in Sports Psychology,"

 

Huh, you didn't even know that was a fucking thing.

 

"And then I did a bullshit teaching course and taught a bunch of moody little butterballs for a few years, I was happy, don't get me wrong, met my wife before the Collapse there too - she was staff, taught Geography, nothing I had any interest in, but loved her the second I saw her," he said - and how open he was floored you.

 

You supposed he also felt the disparity between how much you knew about him compared to his devastating secrets.

 

"Her name was Lucille, she was a good woman, better than I deserved to be honest. I was a pretty happy guy, got rides to and from work with the wife, always had a hot dinner when we got home, bitched about more or less the same kids," he chuckled "-but God, I got lazy. I'll tell you that. Before the Collapse, I was one of those guys who found any excuse to not be at home or spend time with her, logic being that we were in each other's faces twenty-four fucking seven anyway,"

 

You nodded slowly - you know he mentioned wives, plural - but those sounded more like bed warmers, this one - pre-Collapse, sounded serious. It was very hard to picture Negan as a husband, even more than it was to picture him as a child, to be honest.

 

"I got caught up trying to leave the school and coach professional college football teams - that was a big thing here," he added, as though remembering you were English very last "-followed that shit like it was my religion and nothing got me more excited than the goddamn Superbowl. Seems fucking pointless now, doesn't it?"

 

You shrugged, before slowly unfurling yourself, getting a bit more confident to slowly inch towards him - he noticed, but he didn't comment.

 

"I think it's important to remember who we used to be, it helped make us who we are,"

 

"Just don't get stuck there - your past - " Negan reminded you - making you both fall silent for a few more moments "-You're not the only one who has to struggle with it, if it helps. I try not to fall into all of the memories of things I could have done better with Lucille, or I'd be one sad sack of shit, and there's enough things to be sad about,"

 

Yeah, like the loss of civilisation, you thought darkly. Negan didn't know what possessed him to say the rest, maybe it was the prevailing sense of loss he detected, or the fact he felt like he was peeling you layer for layer and it just didn't feel like it was fair, when you went out of your way to try to be fair to him now - like with meals and thanking him when you really didn't have to.

 

"She died before the Collapse, I guess I never really got over it, because I unplugged for so long. Hit me like a fucking train,"

 

You almost asked how, but didn't need to - he said it quickly enough.

 

"Heart condition, spent most of our time ignoring to be honest and then one day... you know, it just happens," he said with a shrug - it's not like he could have predicted it, and there wasn't anything that could really stop it, only reduce the risk of it happening at all, which, to be honest, Lucille had been a pretty healthy woman otherwise, he'd agonised over it enough to know not much could be done. It was horrible, it was unfair, and worst of all, he had nobody to hold accountable, so yeah - Negan never really got over it.

 

He just stayed angry.

 

"I guess you can join me in the 'totally not over it but pretending we are' club," you said quietly "-you couldn't have seen it coming. I fucking did when it came to my mum - I watched her get up and start coughing up blood like she'd torn her throat open, and I just knew. I just had to watch and hope it didn't get worse, then escape with her - I mean, shit, I'm ... I know stuff but I'm not a doctor and even I was...! I mean shit. Fighting cancer was hard enough before the Collapse. She uh, she never really stood a chance."

 

Negan was quiet - at least he didn't have to  _watch it happen_ and be able to do fucking  _nothing_ about it.

 

"How aren't you angry?" he asked after a long moment of silence, and it took you a while to answer - because you didn't have one immediately.

 

"Oh, I am, but with me, the sadness always comes first. Always has. My father was the angry one, I do my best to reserve mine until... it doesn't stay in anymore," you said quietly.

 

Huh, your dad was starting to sound like a real piece of shit.

 

"If it helps any, my old man wasn't the greatest - I mean shit he was probably better than yours - but he didn't drink, I just got a royal ass-beating now and then if he saw me slipping bellow average on my report cards," he said wryly "-kind of a corporal punishment kinda guy which, y'know, over the years, I've finally grown to understand it, plus it was just sorta the done thing back when I was a kid,"

 

Boy, had he - you snorted, knowing exactly how well he'd grown to understand it just from the stories.

 

Negan closed his eyes and let out a long sigh - oh yeah, you were a broken person, in a million tiny fucking pieces, but there was still an unfathomable strength between all the shards that kept them loosely kept together and he couldn't help but marvel at it. Part of him wished he had the time - he probably didn't - to just try to glue all the pieces together to see what picture they formed - to see if you could form a happy person if all the puzzle pieces of your personality were fitted together the right way. He wondered if a person exposed to enough pain and misery, broken beyond belief, could still experience that kind of happiness. He was a man of results, and curiosity, and he part of him longed to see what kind of a person you were if you were happy, and just a little less tortured.

 

"You really are fucking fascinating," he repeated.

 

"And you're just weird, old man. Really weird," you sighed - because he was, you had a life that made for good reading but in reality, was just another no-hoper's tale that just got interrupted by the fucking apocalypse, in your eyes, nothing much special until Professor Mattius and Sergei  _made you special -_ by making you uniquely skilled. That's all you really saw yourself as - as a unique pile of power and skills and if Negan was being purely pragmatic and looking to say, integrate you into an empire, that is easily all he would see.

 

But like this? Interpersonally? He could see you were a work of art - a tragic piece of art that wasn't finished yet, not in his eyes, and if he was honest - 

 

You had him wrapped around your little finger, and you probably didn't even know it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	10. Can I Be Alive?

 

Great, this was fucking great - fabulous - being left with your own thoughts for this long made him have to contemplate things he ordinarily wouldn't break a sweat over. Most of the time he just assumed he was being masculine and visceral, more so whenever you dropped to your knees and gave him an ample view - and your naturally scantily clad sort of nature did a lot to stimulate the imagination, sure, but now? Negan wasn't sure if it was that and a mixture of going stir crazy and the fact you were the only person besides Morgan who willingly spent any time with him. You were coming into his cell more, and sitting closer to him - he was leaning in more, asking you more things - and it became quickly apparent to Negan that he was the primary source of your social life, because you would head straight for him after doing your training.

 

The silences weren't uncomfortable, though Negan wasn't sure if they ever were. At the first couple of shifts you had, you just continued to exist and do your thing whether he was awake or not, with your earphones in, even those weren't uncomfortable, just natural, but now the silences were intense - and he found himself staring at you more even when you weren't saying anything, and were just silently reading through an engineering text. When you glanced up and caught him, he'd just smile, and you'd go back to reading, unbothered and largely oblivious. The banter even felt like it was getting flirty - at least, on Negan's part, and you'd just respond in humour, he had to admit, The Nero Incident had made him think with his dick a bit more than he was comfortable with.

 

You noticed things too - like his voice almost sounded deeper than usual, even if it was just a modicum, and he noticed you sat next to him after the last talk you had yesterday - shoulder to shoulder, and whilst shoulders weren't exactly sexual, the fact that you disregarded bodily distance now must have meant something. In all honesty, you barely put too much thought into it, it was more that the prevailing sense of loneliness was getting to you because you had, in fact, decided to keep to yourself and so this feeling like you didn't integrate with the inner circle of the Alexandrian's felt like constant background noise.

 

This, at least, made you feel like you had a friend, and shoulder to shoulder contact wasn't weird, and it was less intimate than the latest incident of you sleeping on top of his chest and holding you.

 

He asked for another toweling off - and you nodded, leaving and coming back a short time later - but with more than a towel.

 

"So I've been thinking about this for a while," you said conversationally - he looked at your hands and saw you carrying a large pale of water in a red bucket, a long towel draped over your shoulder and something being squeezed in your other hand which he couldn't quite tell what it was.

 

"You've been thinking about me scrubbing myself?" scoffed Negan with a smirk - again, that flirty edge that you'd come to get used to you, making you roll your eyes with just the faintest splash of red on your cheeks.

 

"No, you just stink," you replied cheerfully, opening up the cell door and dropping the heavy bucket with a loud splash, glancing in it - he saw crystal clear water with a faint bit of steam coming from it, so it was, at least, quite hot, but not unbearably so - when he moved closer to it and stuck as finger in and raised a brow up at you. It seemed since The Nero Incident, that Negan intensified the teasing and while you didn't mind it, and often found it quite funny, you wished there were ways you could retaliate, at least a bit.

 

"Such a charming woman," Negan sighed - before seeing you drop the item in your hand into the bucket - and saw it was actually a large, clear, yellow loofah-sponge, and just like that, it clicked with him as you stooped to your knees and began loosening his leg chains so he could take his clothes off when he needed to.

 

"Like I said, I've been thinking about this a while and I figured we could probably stretch to a sponge bath at least, you can wash that decade of grease out of your hair with it too," you said flatly, ignoring the look on his face as he began to undo his belt and unbutton his pants in preparation - you glanced away quickly, because the gesture always seemed terribly intimate to you, and catching the look on your face, he chuckled.

 

"You sure you trust the prisoner with the sponge?" he teased - referencing the whole I'm-not-handing-you-the-shaving-blade incident which resulted in you very intimately shaving him clean a few days prior, you scowled - and yeah, you weren't surprised he was still teasing you - so you decided you'd just shut him up back.

 

Still sat on the floor, he blinked in surprise as you got on your knees, sticking your hand into the water and soaping it up slightly with some soap from the supply shed until there was a healthy lather that coated your dark fingers in white, bubbly water and soaked through most of the sponge.

 

"Actually no, I don't. The prisoner could choke himself or others on such an implement," you said formally, not looking at him in the face as you squeezed some excess water out of the sponge and you crawled towards him in a predatory manner, like a big cat slowly closing in on their prey.

 

Negan's eyes widened - whatever reply he expected you to give  - it wasn't that - he rather expected you to have a sassy sort of response and to blush and look away. He did not really expect you to be advancing on him, and he fell silent, suddenly feeling like he was holding his breath as your empty hand landed on the front of his shirt, and then very quickly - almost aggressively, lifted it up. You didn't lift it up all the way - but he flinched and let out a deep gasp from the base of his gut as you pressed the warm, wet sponge against the surface of his abdomen, pressing the sponge deeply against him, sending trails of water down the exposed bits of skin until it hit the edges of his sagging pants.

 

You felt the intensity of his stare at your face and you glanced up at him, smirking despite how flush you looked - even though your hands hadn't gone anywhere south of the belt, it was still sensuous - even the aggressive pull up of his shirt meant the parts loosely tucked into his pants and covering some of his lower waist was now exposed, furthering more of his happy trail until it ended at a pair of black boxers peeking out from undone pants.

 

"You should maybe tease me less about my dirty dreams and focus more on your filthy body," you said coolly, smirking and ignoring the loud alarm bells going off in your head at your behaviour -  _it's just a joke, besides, hasn't he been doing this all fucking day? You're just getting even, that's all this is._

 

The sponge was frozen on his chest, between his pectorals - again, while you hadn't moved your hand anyway, the trails of water felt sensual as they coursed down his chest and he was frozen, feeling his heart in his throat for a second.

 

" _Well...this is new..._ ," he didn't recognise the tone he was using - it was a cross between a whisper and a deep murmur, unable to take his eyes off of you. but was giving you a strange half-smile, only to lapse into biting down on his lower lip as you very slowly dragged the sponge down his happy trail with purpose, spreading soapy water down his front as you did so, trying to match his stare even though you felt your ears burn. Negan felt a warm sensation curling in his gut as his chest steadily rose and fell with his now slightly ragged breathing - wondering how far this was going to go.

 

"Unfortunately for you, I'm an irresponsible and sometimes careless jailer who sometimes trusts the prisoner too much to not hurt himself or others," you murmured, pressing the sponge deeply against his lower torso once you passed his belly-button and hit the band of his pants and boxers. You moved your free hand to Negan's right arm wrist and dragged his hand over to the sponge, forcing his hand to hold it there as you backed out of his space and grinned. He watched you in disbelief as you dropped the towel near his feet, whistling casually - closing the cell door and moving to your beanbag, happily plopping yourself onto it and grabbing the first book in the pile so you could hide your rising flush behind the pages.

 

"So in other words, you're doing your own sponge bath, but if you're lucky, you might have a dream where you aren't," you teased - catching the wide-eyed look and the dark colour his cheeks had gone, and without the massive beard, you could actually see it on his aged features and couldn't help but think he looked better when he wasn't being infuriatingly cocky, and that this expression was very personally, immensely satisfying.

 

"Fuck you did you actually just fucking do that?!" Negan laughed suddenly, trying to ignore the tingles of anticipation and excitement that had followed the droplets of water down the front of his torso and right the way down his spine. Fucking hell - thank God you didn't actually glance down and look away from his face while you pulled your little joke or you might have caught the twitch in his pants which he had very nominal control over.

    

You didn't dignify it with a response, and made a show of putting the book well over your face, loudly flicking the pages until you got the one you left off on. Negan continued to whine, and complain - in a distinctly undignified manner, before you put the book down and were greeted with the sight of him wrapped in just the dry-off towel, with his hair dripping wet down his face, and the bucket now filled with dirty water.

 

Shit.

 

You swallowed thickly at the sight - considering your earlier actions, maybe you should have gone with the sponge bath - but it wouldn't have done your hormones any good. Even if you thought he was attractive, it didn't mean you had to act on it - and it was wrong, very wrong. You were his jailer - and he was older than you by a long shot, the power balance was askew both ways but you had to admit, but this was just you thinking with your hormones and not your head. You'd been spending too much time with him, you reasoned - but this was just a consequence of unloading your past.

 

Yeah, this was no different to a rebound scenario in a lot of ways, break up with your ex and bitch about them to another person that you end up laying with - though was the Major really an ex? Not really, and it had been months since you left Louisiana. This and, if the other's found out it'd probably cause a shitstorm - but was it their business? You trained them and you were not close to them as they would prefer, you could pick up your shit and leave and could they really fucking stop you? No. Your life was free and yours to live, Rick Grimes had said something to that effect when he realised on some vaguer level how deep the Major's control was at your old camp.

 

Still, this "friendship" should probably be kept under wraps until you figured stuff out.

 

_What's to figure out?_

 

"Maybe next time," you said, suddenly, when you went to pick up the bucket, walking into his cell while he was still in a considerable state of undress. 

 

_It's because you're not used to - it's because you aren't used to **feeling** this hard._

 

Bullshit. You've been clean for months, and it's not like you were addicted to medication specifically, or even alcohol, like your father, you were just addicted to the sensation of distraction - escapism, that's how you passed entire portions of your life under the reign of the Major at the bayou, and how you coped after Mattius died.

 

Actually, you mused, this is the cleanest your body has been in a while, free of touch, free of sin, free of toxic materials if you count the amount of alcohol you purged out of your system, you felt cleaner than you had in a long while, even out on your own you still had a habit of looking for some route of escape. It wasn't always alcohol, or boxes of medication, often it was just you dragging your fingers down your muscles and leaving bruises under your own hard touches. They'd fade eventually, but not all of them. 

 

You looked up into his dark eyes, feeling your throat dry up for a moment.

 

"What next time?" he said questioningly, lips curved into an innocent, curious little smile as you picked up the bucket to clean out his cell and tip down the drains. Oh, fuck no - why wasn't he dressed yet? Why was your head stuck in the fucking gutter just because you were hormonal?

 

_One of those rare times you feel your hormones and don't avoid them. You ain't walking with the dead, on your own no more. You're in a town. You can't avoid it._

 

Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it. 

 

"Maybe I'll do the sponge bath next time," you breathed, before quickly averting your stare and turning heel in the cell, you watched his face morph from amused to unreadable, and that was when you more or less high-tailed it (as much as one could with a sloshing bucket) - turning your body so he didn't see the look of instant regret and wide-eyed horror. You could feel your heart doing uncomfortable pounds against your ribs and somehow it was worse than when you shaved him - because you crossed a couple more boundaries.

 

You tipped the content of the bucket down the drain and sighed.

 

You were just trying to do a good fucking thing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The stupid Nero dream. That's what changed things.

 

_Liar._

 

While it certainly didn't help, things changed the moment you started being kind to him, the moment you started - shit, maybe it was the moment your lips shared the same spoon. You ended up taking an impromptu walk - determining that you couldn't really think straight around the man, or maybe you were, and the idea of that scared you. As in, your thoughts and emotions had never been so clear in your life and you didn't like the implications of that - you didn't like this visceral attraction that hung in the air now that you two were on the same peer level.

 

You didn't like this uncontrollable sensation of heat, it wasn't right - it wasn't right for so many reasons, but it felt like he might even be the only connection keeping you to Alexandria, and like the town had unwittingly and through no fault of their own, severed and cauterised their chances of bonding with you after you trusted them, and then The Jackson Incident happened. You had to say something to him back - you had to address the tension, but how did you address it without it getting awkward?

 

And if you addressed it, would it stop - _did you want it to stop?_

 

You could easily just stop doing the job and work the pantry or something, literally anything, so that's not an excuse.

 

You dragged yourself back to his cell for the evening shift after Morgan finished up - he detected something off about Negan, but wrote it off as poor rest. You slowly came into the room, dimming the light as it was getting quite late and you personally didn't feel like reading. Thankfully (obviously) Negan now had clothes on - dressed in the pants, shoes tank-top and - for once, his leather jacket. You realised it was the first time you'd seen him in it, and cursed internally - because he did look pretty fucking good in it - and leather jackets had a way of making people look several times more attractive than usual.

 

Shitting fuck.

 

He must have put it on after you left, and you had to watch rather torturous manner in which he unzipped it slowly, revealing he had the tank-top you had washed on, he raised himself up and began to stride to the cell bars until his leg chains stretched, and he was pushing himself against it so he could talk to you one to one as you moved slowly toward him.

 

"I needed a walk," you said after a moment "You scrub up...decently,"

 

Yeah, that was a safe comment.

 

"Thank you darlin' - I didn't think I'd be seein' you again to be honest, things got a bit..." he trailed off. Typical, Negan would just call it out and call a spade a spade, you don't know why you thought he wouldn't - he couldn't just not address it, it was all he was fucking thinking about, because unlike you, he didn't have the option of going out for a walk.

 

"Yeah," you said, letting out a slow breathe, somehow, the cell bars didn't feel like they were making that divide between you noticeable, not when his admittedly perfect face was pushed between the bars and there was more than enough width between them that if you pushed yourself against them, you'd be body to body.

 

"So with that in mind, what I'm gonna ask you is going to sound like a bad idea, and I don't want to freak you out darlin' - I really don't,"

 

And fuck the way he called you darling - it was too fucking nice for an unpleasant fucking man.

 

"I know you don't sleep good, but you slept better here, and I..." he closed his eyes "-I really liked it,"

 

Shit.

 

"I really liked it a lot - and I don't mean we have to do anything sexy, we don't - I just - you're so small and... fuck, okay this was smoother in my head," Negan cringed, he wasn't like this, he was usually pretty great at getting what he wanted, but being in prison was taking its toll, and he was losing a little of his charming, perfect veneer because he was  _not_ a fumbler, or a cringer, but he was doing both of those things right now, because if he lost you than he lost the one ray of light he really had. Somehow though, the fact he wasn't infallible and not in control was oddly relaxing to you.

 

Admittedly, that's what you liked about the look he'd given you when you did the thing with the sponge.

 

Which, Christ - you couldn't even think about without blushing - it was the sudden and raw vulnerability of the man which had made your heart race - and you being his jailer - it wasn't fair to exploit it.

 

"Okay, sans the part where I hurt my fuckin' back sleeping up against the bars, sleepin' with you on me was real nice, so nice - and I forgot..." he trailed off - yeah, in his head, this also sounded way less creepy and desperate "This is gonna sound mighty fuckin' creepy and I don't mean for it to - shit. What I'm trying and failing to say is - I've  _really_ missed the feel of a woman - and I don't mean... shit, I don't mean it has to be like _that,_ " he breathed - knowing full well the past you came from, he absolutely didn't want to be added onto the list of creepy guys.

 

"I just... if I'm gonna die here..."

 

_Shit, he's pulling that card._

 

"I want the last moments to not be the worst, I know I don't exactly fuckin' have the right to want it easy, but after last night - I realised how much I just want to be human," he smiled softly "-ain't nothin' like the warmth of a pretty girl that smells nice to do that for you, but if you don't wanna - that's fine. We can pretend that..." his tone went an octave lower "-that I never asked."

 

"Just trust me not to hurt you, because I don't wanna hurt you," he breathed "-if you say yes, I just need you to know that,"

 

Huh, you knew what he wanted, but somehow, you needed to hear him say it - to pour salt into his vulnerability.

 

"You haven't exactly asked me yet," you mumbled, making him give you a somewhat put-out, tired little smile, if he was embarrassed - it didn't show so much anymore - but clearly he was nervous.

 

"I'm asking you to lay with me, I mean, you sleep better, I sleep better, everybody wins," he said with a shrug.

 

Fuck.

 

_Or we can pretend he never asked._

 

The boudoir he had in the Compound used to serve his sexual purposes, but he went to a lot of trouble to make it perfect, and to provide his harem with an array of things to keep them flawless and perfect. He did his best to make that corner of his world completely untouched by the apocalypse because that is what he needed to be reminded that he was human. Now, all this time with you - you had a similar effect through a very different way, you made him human by forcing him to acknowledge his many and glaring flaws and the reasons for his empire falling, and why he was ultimately, not a great guy.

 

"You don't even have to touch me if you don't want to, just...close is okay,"  _but I want to touch._

 

Now, he could just settle for holding you, and he'd take it as a similar sort of relief - he didn't even address the weird, sexual remark you made - because he could tell from the look on your face and speed in which you left that you were a hormonal mess and didn't really know how to process it yourself.

 

But - Negan thought smugly  _\- she's attracted to me._

 

And that made his ego feel good.

 

"Nothing weird," you breathed, by way of saying yes.

 

Yes, you were going to lay with Negan.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The pillow was large, but so was Negan - and laying on the floor of the cell was not the comfiest thing in the universe, and it was definitely strange. Sharing the pillow also felt like you were far too much in each other's spaces and you contemplated going up and getting another, but ultimately found yourself too lazy to do it. Laying next to Negan wasn't actually that bad - true to form he didn't actually do anything weird and the most he did was ask if it'd be easier if he put an arm around you so you didn't roll off the pillow when you tried to sleep on your side.

 

You thought that might be a bit too intimate, but it's not as if that didn't happen already while you'd been intoxicated, and you hadn't protested when he moved you between his knees to make that happen. The zebra sheet did at least, fit two when close enough together, but you found you didn't mind where it rode up so much, because Negan's massive body radiated heat on its own anyway. It was a surreal sort of thing to be doing, laying on your back next to Negan with your head flat on the pillow, inches from him and staring at the ceiling. 

 

"This is a little bit weird," you said after a moment, and maybe it was because while you shared both a sheet and a pillow, you weren't really touching much for what was ultimately something very intimate.

 

"Just a bit," Negan agreed with a smile - staring up at the ceiling, he was mostly shocked that he even got you to agree to this, but it seemed a lot had changed and he was trying to process it himself. He still didn't know how to take the evolution of your banter, he wanted you to flirt back instead of just the cattiness, but when you did, he didn't know what to do with it. 

 

Was this what he wanted? - You turned to him and immediately felt like you'd gone from awkward to intimate when you did so, as it brought you inches closer to him - but he kept as he was, which helped at least a little.

 

"I don't know if this is a good idea," you said - and then he turned his head, at least, without turning his whole body - because then it really would feel close. 

 

"What are you so afraid of happening?" said Negan seriously with a frown - maybe he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear you say it, because maybe he could convince himself he wasn't just going stir-crazy and getting obsessed from being exposed to you for most of the days - and now? Nights.

 

"Jesus," you swore - closing your eyes - why was he doing this now?

 

Well, you mused - you did kind of make it worse by reciprocating without provocation - the fucking sponge bath comment, you didn't have to say it, but you did. Everything was all screwy between you two now, between you spilling your guts out with him and him saying he wanted to be your friend, it all got fucked up.

 

"What do you think?" you said sharply - he was just trying to make you say it, put a label on it, or make what you two were doing with each other make some kind of sense but the truth was, you couldn't. You didn't know yourself, and maybe the answer frightened you. "Because I don't have an answer, dude."

 

"I don't form attachments, okay? I just - you just don't, not when people drop like flies, shit, I don't... " Shit. Fuck.

 

"An attachment," you could almost hear the air-quotes in his voice as he said it, and if you didn't know any better, you'd say he was amused by your choice of framing. "I've been called worse," Negan added.

 

"I don't know what the fuck to call it old man, okay?" because calling him old man made this seem less personal, but with your escalated banter, it seemed almost affectionate and you regretted it the instant it hit you how it sounded out loud now. Fucking fuck.

 

"With all your clever books I'd have thought you'd have at least one word," Negan needled at you - and you bristled, slowly getting up so you were sat upright, the sheet falling down to your waist on your end.

 

"I - don't - I don't know!" you said, wringing your hands out nervously. "-I haven't done this in a while, okay? The friend thing, or the.. attachment thing, whatever it is. Because that has to be what it is, I don't have any other friends here. It feels like there was an open window, a chance - for me to make a go of things. Then Jackson happened - and the window shut. G-Goddammit I was going to leave, I was going to go east - way east of New Richmond, if I could get that far. Take a risk over at this group I got an offer for - Alpha Centauri. Start over again, just - keep on starting over until I get it right. Until something goes right, or something gives or -- "

 

Then you went quiet suddenly, groaning and putting your face into your hands - so this is what it was like, to be thrust back into a settlement where you had no choice but to feel and deal. 

 

"Or I give up, I don't know! It's not like there's anything left out there! Just more things that want me dead than alive, including people not just rotters. i was going to leave but the only reason I didn't is that you asked me to stay after holding up my story to Grimes," you said shortly. "So yes! Attachment! Friendship! Bullshit! Whatever you want to call it,"

 

"Because you're the only person I talk to properly - like this - intimately, I mean. You're the only person who knows why I don't fucking fit in here!" you said, unburrowing your face to give the man your most put-out look, only to see that he'd sat up too, and his large shoulder was almost brushing yours.

 

"You're the only reason I'm here, I should have been gone the second they executed Jackson - and when I'm not here I'm thinking about being here and when I'm gone out on a run I'm thinking of the bullshit I'm going to share with you," you said in annoyance "-and what about you? You, huh? You don't get to have much choices in the matter, you get what you get, and all you get is me. This is - it's not healthy - it's all screwy - okay? The power dynamic is totally fucked, all of it is just fucked! Don't you get that?!"

 

Negan was silent, mostly because he felt like you were going on a rant.

 

"You're old, and - fucking - I'm your jailer," you said in futility "-you're probably not long for this world as it is and we both know it. So why am I bothering? Why am I investing in you at all?!"

 

"You're invested in me?" said Negan quietly, continuing to push your buttons.

 

"I guess?!" you said, throwing your arms in exasperation. "I guess I fuckin' am! I don't have a word for it, I'm not used to..." shit.. you just hadn't felt so uncertain in such a long time, or much of anything recently, ever since Rick Grimes picked you up in his jeep, you'd done nothing but feel, and you couldn't cope. Jackson's house showed that.

 

Yeah, you had to get up - pulling the sheet fully off yourself to get out of the cell - until you felt his hand around your wrist, holding you in place.

 

"Listen to me, I've - I've been walking with the dead for  _months_ \- before I got hauled in by Grimes and his people, okay, and before that - I had my mum. Then she started coughing up blood. Then one night, I didn't have her anymore. I kept her dead with me for three months until the heat started to intensify the putrification process and eventually her body couldn't even stand up anymore. She deterred other dead people from me so I kept her, and maybe I didn't know how to let go. Once I left the bayou - I left everything the Major's people plied me with to keep me there. Alcohol, pain relief, morphine - and don't look at me like that," you groaned.

 

Negan didn't think his expression had changed, and it hadn't - but you felt like it should have, so you spoke to him as though he'd judged you.

 

"I wasn't a druggie, most of the time I didn't even have a choice, other times I let it happen, because it's the only way I kept it up to my old lady that things were good, or - not that bad, anyway, and then when I left the bayou. When I realised she was sick - and I knew she wouldn't have long there if they found out, I started... I thought I might start to.. deal with it all again. Until even her body gave out - and I had nothing to stall the pain, or get rid of it - or overload it until tomorrow - it was like someone just....reached inside my head, pulled a cord and switched off all of my lights," 

 

Negan knew he shouldn't interrupt - but he couldn't help himself - he did so anyway.

 

"I wished you'd have left sooner, found me before this, found the Saviors. I really do," he sighed, turning his head away from you for a moment. "-Because that shit ain't right, I wouldn't want to be somewhere where it was,"

 

"Don't feel too bad, I helped cut some of the drugs we got in, we used to um, we traded it as a commodity - would you believe it, there's still space for it in survivor communities? I don't know why I was ever surprised, the people unlucky enough to watch the world fall to shit want something to help escape it, even if it was for five minutes. I get that, at least," you shrugged, glancing at the faded marks on your arm, and where the long walker-scratch had been.

 

"Lucky I was on the sauce at the time and I poured it all over the scratch I had and killed the bacteria before it spread. That's how it spreads - by the way, we all have it but if you get the grungy parts of a rotter into your bloodstream it's a bacterial infection that causes the fever that kills you then makes you turn. Mouths are a breeding ground for it, that's why a bite is quicker, but rotter nails - they're half falling off some of the time,"

 

Huh, that was interesting - Negan didn't actually know that, and not for the first time, he mused how you were absolutely wasted on people like the Alexandrians.

 

"I remember taking a sharp swig of vodka and then just pouring it all over my arm, calling it a day. Waited to turn. Didn't," you shrugged "-I didn't even feel anything when it happened. I haven't felt much of anything but now I'm here and - cleaner then I've ever been, feeling things, and just... "

 

Now Negan thought he was understanding, you spent whole portions of your life utterly numb and now you weren't, and you didn't know how to cope.

 

"I can't cope, okay? The Jackson thing happened and I fell apart, I thought I was doing okay but - fucking fuck, I trashed his house, do you know that? I had a fucking... shit fit and I destroyed his whole house like that'd somehow fix things, I feel like I'm in a constant state of falling apart, and I'm hormonal and -  _sober -_ with people trying to convince me they give half a shit," you choked out "-and all I have is you,"

 

"You and my feelings - and everything, and it's... it's a mess, and - I'm going to just... I'm going to stay here, until they figure out what they do to you - and then I leave. I promised you that. I owe you that - or Grimes might have had me eat a bullet instead of Jackson, but I'm going to leave now," you pulled your arm out from his light grip and gave him a piercing look that for a moment, made the breath catch in his throat.

 

It wasn't the first time you made him do that, and again, you'd thrown him for a loop - and he couldn't help the disgust that boiled in his gut when he understood the full breadth of what the bayou had done to you - every day he was still learning and the more he learned, the more he despised what humanity had become. It was pathetic.

 

"Maybe I'll do this with you another night, when things aren't... the way that they are at the moment. I just - I need to leave right now before I do something stupid, with all these things I can't control - like trashing Jackson's house," you breathed, closing your eyes as you slowly stood up, raising yourself to full height and dusting off your combat trousers, slowly heading for the cell door.

 

"What, like trash the cell? With all of two things in it?" he said hoarsely - trying to make a dry crack at you - as if the banter could go back to normal after this.

 

"No," you said shortly, glancing over your shoulder at his stupid, idiotic, cocksure and disgustingly attractive smirk.

 

"Something stupid," you sucked in a sharp breathe "-like kiss you," you said bluntly, eyes narrowing, before you turned your head back to the cell door to leave.

 

You left in the silence that reigned, making quick pace to do so, because you didn't need to hear Negan's reply to that. You needed to go out and clear your head, and sleep in your own bed. You had to do that tonight - because there was no way you were going to lay with him today. You weren't ready to go down that rabbithole yet - not by a long shot, and frankly, Negan needed to chew on what you told him - and maybe when you two had clearer heads with less of the weird sexual tension, you could actually talk.

 

Hell, you thought with a wry smile as you looked up at the ceiling - you might even blame it on your period, and call it a day.

 

 

 

 

 


	11. In My System

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had Kat Dahlia's "My Garden," on loop while writing this, which considering what the song is one massive allegory for, I don't think we should be surprised. Slow updates until at least April 24th due to deadlines

 

You weren’t addicted to drugs, alcohol or even the danger – which considering how much you involved yourself with all of those things, you would think it’d be the case. Standing in the storage room for the medicine, your eyes ran over the entire crate of pain relief you could see. Lifting up the lid, you could see it was just wall to wall aspirin – picking up one of them, you saw a different kind of medication underneath. Vicodin?

 

Shit. They must either haul really well or some of this was from the old Sanctuary which Negan had headed. You could feel your skin start to prickle with an almost static-electricity sort of sensation racing up to your elbows as you held it under your face.

 

“Vicodin, Aspirin, Tylenol – Pseudoephedrine, antiobiotics…”  you mumbled to yourself – before almost violently putting the packet back and slamming the lid on the crate down with a heaving sort of sigh, feeling your nails pushing into the flesh of your wrist as you grabbed it hard. It was a habit – you were a woman of habits and needs. You put your hand to the back of your neck, and felt for where you knew roughly where you would feel a hypodermic needle in cases of extreme resistance. You remembered the sensation travelling down your spine and up your neck as your body lost control almost instantly, like someone cut you off from all your senses.

 

You weren’t addicted to drugs, or alcohol – you told yourself – so why were you here?

_Just to think about not-feeling any more. To pretend it’s an alternative option – resistance is too good, how much of me would I have to keep on destroying to get myself back to that comfortable numb._

Pain often was better than numbness, and that explained a lot of the faded bruising that wasn’t the result of others.

 

“Are you needin’ something?” it was Eugene who spoke, but he’d been so quiet you nearly jumped out of your skin, or perhaps you were just lost in your thoughts and didn’t hear him move to you. “I’m in charge of this so if’n you’re needing something, it’s me you ask,”

 

You realised you needed to explain why you were there and instinctively, you went back to grab your wrists, your arms – everything- squeezing so tight your dark skin turned another shade briefly, nails digging into your skin and leaving soft, almost c-shaped little dents that went deeper than most. Some were permanent.

 

Eugene thought they might be track marks, but seeing the curvature and the shape and that they weren’t little dots, he knew they weren’t.

 

“Period pain,” you blurted, in truth, you finished today and the associated aches and awfulness was just something you slogged through, your hormones usually remained screwy for two days prior to starting and two or three after finishing. “I was looking for something for period pain but I think I’ll just wait for it to pass on its own, I won’t need them long to be worth breaking into a packet anyway,”

 

Now you’d made Eugene feel awkward – and so he awkwardly began to shuffle away from you so you could walk out.

 

“Oh,” he said flatly “-well… if it hurts really bad you can come back and take something out, just one thing, but you can,”

 

That was strangely nice, but you left him alone – exhaling a sigh of relief – did that mean you were addicted? No, no. You slammed the lid down on the crate and you walked away, rolling the leather sleeve back down your arm. The tingles of pain were delightfully distracting, jolting you out of your daze and giving you this comfortable sort of irritation.

 

_I’m not addicted to drugs, I’m addicted to being hurt._

 

Baring this in mind, was that what was attracting you to Negan? Looking down at yourself as you walked into the Jailhouse, you couldn't help but notice all of the flaws on your body, you knew they were there and you made no bones about hiding them considering how little you seemed to value your own nakedness, and your body. There was no training today, there was enough delayed onset muscle soreness that you would at least grant them Sunday as a day of rest from their training for which everyone was thankful, and Rick didn't mind, not after seeing how hard you worked these soft, doughy, ordinary people - trying to make them into a militia.

 

You came with the shaving gear you brought last time, but caught yourself standing at the door to the cell with a frown - were you really going to go on like things were normal, then decide how to act? You'd concluded when you woke up and during your empty-eyed mulling around the drug reserves that you wanted something - like you wanted it yesterday.

 

You just kept thinking about what you said and wished to God you hadn't said it, but it was out there now - and it was almost liberating in a way. To finally address the tension in such a way that it couldn't be laughed at and ignored. Did you want Negan to hurt you, like the others? Because that was normal for you, now? Or were you simply analysing too hard? Maybe you were hoping for something different - maybe, like in all your dreams where you were serviced or you were otherwise fully in control, this was another desperate, hormonal need to colour in a part of you that's not there anymore. Negan was everything you didn't like in men, warlords - people who hurt others to prove a point and you spent hours upon hours, countless days just tearing him apart, deconstructing his arguments, learning about what he'd done and shining the ugliest light on it. Maybe you wanted control over somebody like that to show you could have control over something, someone - and that they all just didn't have disgusting dominion over you.

 

But then you remembered things - you remembered what he said to do about Jackson, you could even still feel exactly where his hands had been on your shoulders as he told you to expect more of humanity, when he asked for your food but didn't have the cruelty about him to eat it all - even if it was pride what stopped him, the way he held you through the cell bars when you told him why you were falling apart. He apologised - he said he was sorry that it happened to you and for a moment, because it came from a man like Negan, it felt like it carried more weight, because a man you'd have previously classed as just as bad as the Major had given you an apology.

 

It was for that reason that you felt guilty for treating him like he was of the same ilk as them. Negan was an entirely different beast. It's why you were still hovering outside of the door, with your hand frozen on the door knob. Was this when you started wanting him? Physically, anyway. When he gave you a bedrock of support and you had nothing else but he had no history with you, he didn't raise you or see you weak the way Mattius and Sergei had. You weren't his protegee, and so maybe that's why the attraction was there. Maybe it was as simple as when someone falls for their therapist - because of all the support they were given.

 

Negan's words had hit you like a brick the head as you turned the handle agonisingly slowly.

 

_"You need some good dick or something?"_

 

You remember the embarrassment it caused you when he said that but when you remembered it, it gave you chills. Maybe it was as simple as that, maybe it was because you'd been utterly disconnected from yourself for so long that now you were fully feeling everything there was to feel, you just needed release. You were perhaps, exposed to sex far too young - actually, no perhaps about it. You were. It felt like the pendulum had swung completely the other way for you, your body becoming conditioned to feed this need, to be hyper aware of this need, instead of never wanting to be touched again, you felt yourself wanting it more.

 

Just not from the people who gave it to you, it always left you awash in self-loathing after, almost hating your body for accommodating the Major even though you had no choice in the matter. How fucked was that? 

 

Maybe you just wanted to feel human again, maybe you just had an itch that needed scratching. You thought about relieving yourself at home, but you knew exactly who you'd think about if you did it and you'd convince yourself in the throws of heat and arousal that it was just a fantasy and it didn't matter. But you knew how that song and dance went, if you did that, then you were fantasising, and fantasising was almost a kind of obsessing and you didn't need that around someone you were with constantly. Besides, how could you even bare to do that when the real thing was right there? But God, you'd fucking thought about it, and it gave you more chills, so you stopped. The music couldn't even stop it, you didn't feel like anything but  _She Wants Revenge_ and the low 80s sound despite the modernity of the band was haunting, powerful and importantly -  _sexy -_ and you remembered listening to it with Negan. His fingers ghosting over yours across the volume buttons on your CD player, and the lyrics dripping off you almost when you listened to them in bed and all the images they were stirring up, thinking about letting your hand go lower and lower until you realised exactly who you'd be thinking about when you laid in bed and wondered if all you needed was relief. Usually, it was done with a fantasy about people you no longer had contact with. This made Negan unique, and different - because he was there.

 

Fucking there.

 

You opened the door and walked in, seeing his back to you as he sat in his cell, mindlessly finishing off his breakfast. He didn't turn around straight away, giving you a moment to admire the broad stretch of back muscle down his wide, firm torso pressed up against the bars that the white tank-top did nothing to obfuscate.

 

"Glad you came back," was Negan's way of saying good morning, he knew you often contemplated running from your problems, and you just shut the door behind you, before walking to the cell and standing behind the bars. It felt like if you made a decision right then - unlock and go inside, or flop into the beanbag chair outside, that you were making a decision about last night.

 

Ignore, or continue.

 

"I almost didn't, but what can I say?" you rolled your eyes "-you're stuck in my craw,"

 

Humph, well, there were certainly more affectionate ways to put it, but it was accurate all the same. You wondered if Negan struggled to sleep as you did - or if he slept soundly, like a baby, writing it off as your hormones and letting it slide off his back like he used to try to do with the harshness of your older discussions with him. Negan, in truth, had been in a small amount of shock. He supposed you might be attracted to him and that made him absolutely preen, but all he had to go off was your body language which reminded him of his jock years. He wasn't the most popular and handsome guy but he definitely ranked up there, and did exceedingly well, enough that seeing your almost teenage body language shattered the fog around his memories and he remembered it exactly for what it was. 

 

_You found him attractive, somehow._

 

He was not at all a bad looking guy and he knew that, he just didn't expect to land on your radar in that sort of a way, because if he was going to, he'd have thought it would have been immediate. That's how it usually was - if it was purely physical, but with you - it slow boiled, you didn't find him attractive at first, but the closer you got, the more you did because your body language and banter began to change and he found himself rising to it because it made him feel human, and wanted. Two things he didn't think he'd be getting while he sat on what was basically death row.

 

Negan had sat in the cell in pure silence when you'd left last night, and traced his fingers to his lips. He closed his eyes and he thought about how that kiss might play out, he thought about all of the different responses you could have had. He knew all the ways he could have responded, how he could tug off the rest of your head wrap and lose his fingers in your hair because from the bangs you kept loose, he knew it would be dark, soft and beautiful and he wanted to drink it all in. He knew he wanted to feel your small little body interlocked with his and he'd been so desperate that he asked, because something about your smallness against his largeness had felt so intrinsically right. He felt like he was exactly where he needed to be and he wanted to feel that again, so part of him was disappointed when you left him high and dry.

 

But after the words you said and what might have happened next, maybe it was a good idea. Sleeping on it had given him some clarity, and funnily enough, parallel though your lives were at those points in time, you were both reacting near enough the same way. He laid on his back and let his hand travel down his thighs, musing that he hadn't even so much as considered sexual arousal since he'd been imprisoned - understandably so - until you came into the picture. He almost did it too - he wasn't sure what stopped him. Maybe it was feeling like a truly dirty old man, or it was the fact he was in prison without your company. Unlike you however, he had no hangups about fantasising and obsessing - he was all out of options, he was at the end of the road, why would he put himself through an almost Catholic level of guilt for harmless fantasy? So he didn't. Negan closed his eyes and thought about the way your breasts moved in your little sports bra when you leaned down to pick things up from his cell and how he could see right the way down it. He thought about the way you moaned against him, back arching during your Nero dream and swapped Nero's name for his own, his mind adding images of you sleepily sliding your hand into the front of your combat pants.

 

He remembered feeling himself getting a semi in his boxers and turning in his zebra sheet, staring blankly into the distance, hands near his pillow and letting himself ache through the night instead because the fact was - you had a choice to kiss him and instead of rise to answer, you opted out and left. He chewed down on his lip and groaned as his mind kept on supplying him with the image of you masturbating in your sleep, thinking of him - and the semi hardened into an impossibly agitating erection that he spent most the night ignoring.

 

Negan had laid there and wished you'd have kissed him - the beautiful chaos that followed would have been so worth it.

 

"That might be the nicest thing anybody has ever said about me," Negan chuckled - and smiled when you opened the cell door - the way he spoke, you'd think he wasn't tossing and turning in a fine sheen of sweat for most the night.

 

You were choosing to continue.

 

If you'd have known the maelstrom in Negan's mind, you'd have been a lot more confident, and a lot less nervous. You made a choice - and you'd talk it out, it wouldn't be silent and keening where all you did was speak with your body when you fantasised for half a moment how you'd move with the music you listened to - before violently cutting off the thoughts because you knew where they'd go. He watched as you sank down to the cell floor, slowly unzipping the front of your crudely-adorned oversized leather jacket and was equally frozen by how tangentially attractive it was to watch you undress even slightly. If only he could have known that you had those exact same thoughts.

 

"Did you mean all of those things that you said to me after Jackson?" you thought about asking him bluntly - but you felt like it would be too dorky even for you to simply utter "Can I kiss you and see where it goes?" - there was no way that it sounded sexy in your head and for a moment, you wished you knew what it was to be seductive, and a seducer.

 

 _I have an itch I want you to scratch -_ ugh, no, it made you sound like you had a back rash or something.

 

"Little Lovely," he watched as you blushed when he called you that, you didn't used to - but now you did. "-Be specific, I said a lotta things to you that night, all of them I meant, but what're you getting at?"

 

He watched you close your eyes and fight back the urge to cringe, he could see you might be an inch from recoiling, chewing down on your lip and opening your eyes as though you were utterly forced to look at him. Negan was laying with his legs out, back against the bars but with the pillow there to make it more comfortable to sit upright against it.

 

"When you said I could do better than Jackson - and that I... " you swallowed "-that I was pretty,"

 

Negan let out a low hum, as though he was openly mulling it over - you felt his eyes raking all over you, savouring and appreciating.  _Judging._

 

You could not help but feel small, only to hear him chuckle softly after a moment, like he detected your nervousness or something. He expected you to address the kiss - or rather, The Kiss That Didn't Happen, he didn't expect this, and decided to humour you.

 

"If I recall correctly, I called you hot too," he watched as you turned a darker shade, half-turning your head away from him in a manner he found to be preciously insecure. Insecure, but fucking precious. "I'm not in the business of fake compliments darlin', I calls it like I sees it and I see one...." he let out a low whistle. "I see one fine-ass woman,"

 

You turned utterly scarlet and he couldn't hide his toothy grin when you did.

 

"Don't joke, I'm serious," your voice took an insistent whine, and he blinked - he supposed he could have come across as bantering again from how he had chosen to answer, but it didn't mean that his answer wasn't an honest one.

 

"Honey who says I wasn't?" he said, frowning as you turned to look at him with an almost downcast sort of look, he didn't know what he was dealing with - young women's insecurity? What the Hell did you have to be insecure about? He never understood that about girls, girls no matter what they looked like had the ability to get at least five different partners if they were willing to compromise their standards or look in the right places, for guys it was much different. That's how Negan saw it, so when it came to insecurity, he understood it on a surface level, but he didn't understand it when it ran so deeply that it was a personality flaw.

 

"Lemmie rephrase that," he said, lips twitching - his years of experience seemed to be playing in his favour, he knew how to approach this at least, from decades of insecure teenagers - he had enough practice to deal with it manifested in a young woman. "Why don't you think I'm serious, and what answer did you expect me to have?"

 

You wanted to be the seducer - it was supposed to be quick and dirty, but you didn't even know if he would have you and found yourself running into a brick wall of insecurity that you didn't even think about until then. 

 

"Look at me," you said shortly, turning yourself so he saw your back - what he didn't expect you to do, and thank God you didn't see his expression or you would have seen his mouth fall open in surprise with a soft 'oh' - because he absolutely didn't see it coming. He watched as the black material fell down both your shoulders, but it didn't sink in until he saw your back arch forward, then back as you threw the sports bra off yourself and it landed near Negan's knee as you threw it backwards. You crossed your arms over your chest not out of a need to cover yourself but out of a need to feel secure as you drew your shoulders up to your ears and felt your entire face go warm.

 

You didn't turn around.

 

 _"...Oh, my - what in the fuck happened here?"_  his tone was breathy - you could hear him coming closer, his shadow falling over you as you kept hunched over. He could see the violence etched deeply into your skin, he knew it was there before of the lines that showed around the edges but now he could finally see it. There were long, dark scars, that he knew were violently red when they were fresh. Some were thin, others were thick - as thick as the width of his forefinger. They went in crazed directions, every which way - so many diagonally, which somehow seemed so much worse than the vertical and horizontal ones for no real logical reason. There were more little punctures too - all of them within equal width of each other, mostly faded.

 

Ohhh, he really wanted to touch it - his hand reached out before his mind caught up and his fingertips ghosted one of them and immediately it was static electricity passed from one to another, you flinched, and gasped deeply, before lulling your head forward more and pushing your back into his fingers so he didn't yank his hand away.

 

"I'm covered in this shit," you said bluntly "-what didn't happen? The bayou happened, that doesn't matter - just look at what it's done," _Major marked me like some sort of beast._

 

"It's so... not hot."

 

Oh, Negan mused - that's what this was - he felt your skin heating up against his fingers as he trailed down a diagonal line, fucking hell - were you lashed, or something?

 

"You're a survivor," his fingers traced over back muscle too "-there is power in survival, it projects strength, and that power, that strength is smokin' fuckin' hot," he said honestly - but maybe that's wasn't the answer you were looking for. He couldn't tell though, because your face was still turned away from him. "If that's not the answer you're lookin' for then I'll tell you that your ass looks pretty tight whenever you bend over and I don't even try not to look," he smirked.

 

He didn't need to see your face to know you'd gone scarlet again.

 

"You worked - or got worked - super hard for your body and not only is it fine as Hell, you're strong as Hell too, and I didn't even know that could get me hot and bothered but it has," he paused for effect - this was probably the only time it was okay to be creepy, and voice the rude, sexual attraction he had, because you'd asked. "-and for the record you also have a really cute pair of tits on you, I don't know what you have to be insecure about," he pulled his hand back as you moved.

 

As he said that, he watched you turn around, your arms protectively crossed over your chest with either hand resting on your shoulders, covering you in an x-shape as you searched his eyes for some sign that he was just placating you, trying not to hurt you. 

 

_This is all going wrong. I was supposed to be sexy not insecure. Fucking...fuck... can't even do this right..._

 

 

"But they're all over me," you shuddered out - struggling to hold his stare when you said it.

 

"You're a diamond in the rough," he murmured, he searched and searched for the right phrase and it finally felt like he found it "-you have all your rough edges but you're still..." he exhaled softly, trailing off - he didn't know if calling you beautiful would have crossed an emotional boundary, it felt like he might, and he was fine with that - because he thought it to be true - but he couldn't fathom where you were going with this other than to tease him as you had with the sponge. He fought hard any of the warmth and desire that was going through his body when he stared at you, sitting and looking at him like something out of a Men's sports magazine. A sexy, scarred-up pin-up girl who he'd been struggling not to think about all night.

 

"This was supposed to go differently," you said bitterly - but mostly in cynical amusement at how badly you were fucking up your seduction, but the tingling in your gut was what was pushing you - the way your body ignited under even his least sexual touch. 

 

" - 'this' - ?" Negan queried - because he'd dearly love to know where you were going with this "-and different how?"

 

"I came here with the intention of... " you stumbled - you already said you weren't going to just say it, like a fucking dork - and found yourself blushing - how did you deliver this message across? Your frustration bubbled over slightly, you'd been thinking about this for so long and you were still fucking it up. "-I need to get you out of my system," you breathed.

 

Oh, now that was something Negan didn't expect to hear - you needed to get him out of your system? What did that mean? You said he was in your craw but you made him sound a bother but this made it that much more important sounding, like all you were doing was thinking about the physical attraction that you clearly had.

 

Negan had to admit, you were making him feel rather attractive without even intending to, but before he could ask - you carried on talking. Explaining.

 

"When I'm not here, I'm thinking about being here, when I'm... trying to sleep, I'm thinking about the things we've said and done and thinking about what to do tomorrow when I get here," you breathed, screwing your eyes shut. Maybe you didn't want to see what his expression was, maybe he thought you were being unhealthy - because this couldn't be healthy, could it? You'd already called it out for that before, but with these words, it felt like it was being driven home.

 

"The closer I get, the more raw I am, it's all peeling away and I don't know what to do with myself, you're just  _stuck,_ you're just  _there,_ like an itch that won't quit, I suppose that's what happens when this is all there is for me, and me deciding to leave when they...deal with you. It makes me not want to try with them anymore. It's a waste on them, so all there is, is you," he remembered your optimistic nihilism - part of you must want his life to have a few precious good moments in it but something in you had made you think that Rick's people weren't worth that same kindness.

 

You were so sick of being hurt that all it took was one incident to push you over the edge of no longer wanting to trust and he couldn't help but think how much the Alexandrians were missing out on, and how much of a shattered little creature you were. Yes, somehow, despite the nervous pump of blood steadily going south, Negan was still able to think about you like this - maybe it was your face. Your pretty, gorgeous - but terribly vulnerable - face, and that protective shield you'd made of your arms around your naked torso.

 

"I'm here constantly and it's got you just stuck in my system,"

 

That phrase again.

 

"And I thought, if this is just me coming down from not feeling anything to suddenly feeling everything, i could just lay in my bed, put my music on and--" he saw you tilt your head down because you couldn't hold his stare when you uttered it, voice lowering a notch as you did, from shame or something else, he wasn't sure "-touch myself thinking about it, about -- "

 

God - did you really have to explain what having him in your system meant?

 

You did, if you were going through with this, and you'd already copped out once. You had to address the tension, it was sink or swim, put up or shut up, it was bite-the-bullet-and-fucking-do-it or you'd be endlessly looping until it was too late for you to do anything about it.

 

If you felt praying did a damn thing, you would have hoped you weren't about to make a fool of yourself and asked God for some wingman help.

 

"-about you,"

 

Shit. There it was - the bullet in the chamber while you span the chamber and it either ended well or ended bloody and there was no way you could fathom how the man might respond. Negan felt a chill go down his spine, and the warm, almost tingly sort of sensation pooling in his crotch intensify as he stared at you, you saw him wet his lips and stare at you with a heaviness that would have made anyone else wilt. Holy fucking Shit, if he wasn't hanging on your every word then he would have just told you to glance down if you had even a sliver of a doubt that he wasn't into this. He was a red-blooded male, he wanted to scream - of course he was into this, and specifically, into  _you -_ because you had a wicked sort of charm that had him wrapped around your little finger and he needed you to know it.

 

"But God, it's not that easy! The second I do that is the second I start fantasising and the more you start fantasising the closer you get to obsessing and I don't need you to take up any more of my mind than you already do. Do you understand me? I don't - I don't mean to sound harsh I just... I'm scared to get hung up on you, thinking about you, getting more attached than I am - so maybe....maybe you were right," you breathed, forcing your eyes up and giving him a glittering stare that made his throat close for a moment.

 

"Maybe it's as simple as needing some...good..." you trailed off, feeling your face flame. It's not like you couldn't say the word dick, but with this context, you just felt yourself getting embarrassed, so Negan finished your sentence.

 

Smirking the entire time.

 

"Dick?" he said bluntly, forcing you to turn your head - he chuckled. He didn't see himself getting propositioned like this, you were truly hard to predict and it was fantastic. Some spontaneity in his mundane, prisoner life - you! Negan decides to take some mercy on you, and starts talking, avoiding the subject of his own mounting arousal because he's focused on how drawn-in on yourself you'd become. He needed to relax you - he needed to have this happen, God - he'd been aching for it all night and it was like a dream coming true, even if it was in the strangest way. "You want to see if fucking me will get me out your system and you don't have to think about it anymore and things can go back to normal?"

 

They wont, Negan knows - and you know, but you're pretending you don't because you want to justify wanting him and he knows this. He's old, and experienced - and he's cutting you some slack because he still can't quite figure out why the penny dropped this late and why you wanted him at all.

 

"And you really want this from me?" he breathed, his voice is low - it's making you shiver, and when you look up - he sees an unfiltered lust that he swears he only sees in his dreams, it was deliciously hot and he doubted he even knew the kind of smouldering, needy look you were giving him, with your flush cheeks and low breathing. 

 

"I need this from you," need - he felt the tingling sensation again, and marvelled how easily you got him hot with just words. Maybe it was the accent. Ohhh, Negan couldn't remember the last time he was -needed- sexually, maybe never, men were usually not the recipient of this kind of a lust, it was usually projected onto women by them. "If you'll-- if you'll have me,"

 

There it is.

 

"You can pretend I'm someone else if you want, do whatever, just - " he wanted to glue all the broken bits of you together when you spoke, after all he said, did you still assume he might not want you? "-just give me this, please,"

 

"Will you be pretending it's someone else?" he asked - he knows the answer, he was stuck in your system - it had to be him and nobody else, so you give him a confused look and utter a no.

 

"Neither am I," said Negan smoothly, he watched the ways your eyes followed his hands to his belt, how you chewed down on your lower lip and clung to the image of him unzipping his front and barely blinking and for a moment, Negan feels powerful - like you're utterly under his spell. It's so hot he can barely stand it, it must be how powerfully sexy women felt and fuck, if you had more confidence, it could have been you feeling this way too. "I don't really see the need to," he said in a casual, blasé sort of tone. He felt himself smiling as your arms unfurled from around you, like unwrapping a present - at least, to him, he freely let his eyes racing down your neck, collarbone and exposed chest. He observed how much of the scars lessened on their way down, and could instantly tell how purposeful all the damage done to you was.

 

He wondered if any of it was ever accidental, and murmured curses against your flesh as he pushed his mouth up against your neck, feeling you twitch and gasp against him. It occurred to him, at this moment, that this might be the last fuck that he ever has - and so his touches suddenly feel quite reverent, and you don't really know what to do with that.

 

"Fucking hell," he murmured against your skin, lips tracing down your breasts in a way that felt  _right_ when he did it, and had you whimpering for the right reasons, feeling the raised, scarred and bruised skin under his lips when he moved further down, tilting you back gently. "-you have beautiful fucking skin," he murmured "-who'd do this to it?" you shivered as he kissed you in places you hadn't quite been kissed before. "I'd never..." he breathed against you, tongue flicking over the nubs of your breasts and making you flinch in surprise, before letting out a small, simpering sound.

 

"No foreplay," you blurted, feeling his hand going up your thigh over your trousers, shivering against him, making him look at you in confusion, embarrassment rising on your features. "I mean," you gasped - you already said things which were hard enough to get out, so why be ashamed now? "I like it but If you do, I think I'll cum," you said bluntly, making tingles race down his spine. If ever there were words that bypassed the brain and went straight to his dick, it was those.

 

"Shit," Negan cursed, pulling down your combats in one motion when you said it, fingers digging into your panties now and tugging them down your thighs with a lack of grace. "-fucking - fuck," he uttered, fingers brushing up between your thighs and feeling a warm, wetness down his fingers as he merely brushed your entrance, watching you chew on your lip as he did. "You're serious,"

 

 "Fuck.  _Now."_  you murmured as your thighs clenched around his hand before you could stop it, and he pulled it away, fingers that were shining and wet, fumbling around his fly and his belt, eyes refusing to do anything but rake over your body. It felt like he was an autopilot now, his belt skidding across the floor of the cell with the urgency in which he'd thrown it off. He breathed heavily as he pulled his pants and boxers down in one inelegant move, watching as the hungering lust intensified.

 

Negan knew that women didn't typically lust for the male body as viscerally as men did with women, but the way you were looking at him, he could see that you were - because it was a primal sort of thing that didn't need words, and there were few that followed, he simply took off his shirt and watched as your eyes raked over him and he felt your nails going down his shoulders and his back, silently wrapping your legs around him. He wondered if - really - no foreplay - until he felt you move your hand in the gap between your bodies and grasp him at the base of his shaft.

 

He closed his eyes as he felt you slide him inside of you with no pause - he thought maybe that might be slow - but it was quick, and greedy - and he let out a low groan as he felt an all-encompassing sensation of warmth and utter  _wet -_ it was driving him absolutely mad in the moment, because fuck, how could he be craved for this badly? This was raw, burning, youthful arousal and it was entirely directed at him, wanting him,  _needing him_ like you needed air, you felt him shudder as you rocked your hips, pushing your chest against him, adjusting him inside of you.

 

"When you start," he heard you growl "- _you do not stop."_

 

He smiled, licking his lips and securing his arms around you - he didn't know you had this side to you, how could he? He had a clue in that you were a physical creature with how you'd spoken of Jackson but this? This he couldn't have possibly seen coming. Negan silently undid your head wrap and pushed your back onto the cold, stone floor of the cell, drinking in the image of your long, dark hair splayed out under you and it was his first time truly appreciating how long, and gorgeous it was that for a moment, he lost his fingers in it and felt more human than he had in so fucking long.

 

"Beautiful," he breathed, washing it cascade down and around you as he felt your nails clawing into his back - he didn't even know how much of it you were registering, just that you were meeting his thrusts with animal need. When he started, he didn't stop, it wasn't slow, it wasn't paced.

 

It was desperate, quick, dirty - but not careless, anything but careless - reverent had to be the word - because you cared about each other's bodies. At least, you cared about his - running your fingers across everything you could touch and feeding that horny fucking urge that wouldn't quit. 

 

 _"Close,"_ was all you managed to utter, feeling yourself struggling to get air with the sensation of being utterly filled - God, you'd almost forgotten what it was like to answer a lust this powerful, in fact, you weren't sure you ever had, you couldn't remember what it was to actually want a man so badly that it fucking hurt, you usually took care of it and masturbated long before that happened, but this was something else. Something raw, and sexual - but so fucking amazing, it wasn't lovemaking, but it felt like it's sinful shadow, and was no less powerful. 

 

You breathed out his name, lost in a miasma of pleasure coursing through your lower abdomen and your legs - and couldn't remember the last time a man had brought you to this - you felt your back arching, pushing your chest into his broad one. 

 

" _Negan,"_

 

You moaned and muffled it against his body, feeling his cock pushing and throbbing inside of you - hips pushing almost violently against you to meet your movements, you could feel everything even though you were devastatingly wet to a point that it was honestly, easy to miss everything in the glide and the smooth friction - but you felt it all, everything, and let out a muffled groan into his neck as you felt yourself climaxing around him - eyes rolling back with pleasure.

 

Yes.  _Rough._

 

 

Then he heard his name in your mouth again, moaned in the way that he couldn't stand, and you heard him give into the pleasure that was coursing through his hips and you felt his movements change and shift, but you kept yourself clenched warmly around him, losing him to that sensation of being clamped around with need and gave him a look of sweet delirium - complete pleasure, and a want that he couldn't pinpoint, he wasn't sure that a woman had ever given him that look in his life, and it was so beautiful and primal. Pure, and heady - cheeks flush, eyes wide and lips even looking a shade darker in the dim light.

 

" _It's fine,"_ you breathed "- _I'm broken,"_

 

Negan instantly knew what you were saying without needing much more than that, and he came - you chewed your lip and felt him riding his orgasm out inside of you and you laid there, panting and meeting his thrusts with your hips despite wanting to melt into your boneless afterglow. His animal movements slowed, and a more controlled sort of look began to gently wash over him as his hands settled onto your shoulders now, moving with a strange sort of grace as he pulled out from you, glancing down at your sweat-shined body, and running his hands over your naked breasts, and settling them on your stomach, before reverently moving them down your hips, thighs and legs before gently hooking his fingers in with the material of your panties, and effortlessly putting your ankles through them, making you gasp as you felt his lips go up your left leg as he pulled the material up your trembling body.

 

_What...?_

 

 

"You were perfect," is the first thing he says when his lips sit at your hips and your underwear is on, and he's very slowly reaching for his, and his shirt while you tremble from your orgasm on the cool floor as he lays beside you and stares up at the ceiling.

 

Now what?

 

"Am I....out of your system?" he says, his voice is still deep and sexy, the kind of tone a person takes when they're still awash in arousal. You didn't know - because that might have been the best sex of your life, and it fed all of your addictions and your aches and you were tingling for all the right reasons, but was he out of your system?

 

"I don't know," you replied hoarsely. "Maybe I'll want you again when I'm alone and I can't bare it and I remember how short our time is,"

 

Then you swore, this was supposed to make things simpler, but it didn't.

 

"This is the first time a man's gotten me off in fucking years, pardon me if I'm not filled with answers, I'm still in..." you breathed out in shock and afterglow, your bones humming with delight as you lay beside him, unable to see the smug look on his face. "-shock, I guess, and - fuck. This was supposed to make things simpler."

 

You groaned and closed your eyes, letting your heart rate settle.

 

"Why the fuck did it feel so good? I don't think mindless sex is supposed to feel like...that," you mumbled, because you'd had mindless sex and while you didn't really get off, the feelings and electricity involved were world's apart from what had just transpired between you two. "Fucking hell," 

 

Negan didn't miss a beat, smirking away, knowing that he had you hook, line and sinker - and he hoped he was right, because he was just a little bit addicted to what he just experienced, as he too, while having good lays - couldn't quite compare them to what just happened, not at all. You were your own category, and he wanted more - there was no way he was on death row and not have anymore of that amazing experience, there was no way he wasn't going to fuck like it was the end of the world. It was for him.

 

"Because it was forbidden."

 


End file.
